Ex  Libris 

Henry  H.  Bucher,  Jr. 
Cat  Garlit  Bucher 


The  Old  Corner  Book 

Store,  Inc. 
Boston,     -  Mass. 


THE  STORY  OF  MY  LIFE 


Digitized  by  the  Internet  Archive 
in  2015 


V 


https://archive.org/details/journalofdiscoveOOjohn 


PHOTO  SWAINE,  LONDON 

Sir  Harry  H.  Johnston  in  1922 


THE 

STORY  OF  MY  LIFE 


BY 

Sir  harry  H.  JOHNSTON 


ILLUSTRATED  FROM  PHOTOGRAPHS 
AND  PAINTINGS 


THE  BOBBS-MERRILL  COMPANY 

PUBLISHERS  INDIANAPOLIS 


Copyright,  1923 
By  The  Bobbs  Merrill  Company 


Printed  in  the  United  States  of  America 


PRESS  OF 
BRAUNWORTH  &  CO. 
BOOK  MANUFACTURERS 
BROOKLYN,  N.  Y. 


THE  STORY  OF  MY  LIFE 


THE  STORY  OF  MY  LIFE 


CHAPTER  I 

I  WAS  born  in  the  early  Saturday  morning  of  June  12,  1858, 
the  eldest  child  of  my  mother,  Esther  Laetitia  (Hamilton),  and 
the  third  son  of  my  father,  John  Brookes  Johnston;  at  4  New- 
ington  Terrace,  Kennington  Park,  South  London.  My  father 
had  married  his  first  wife,  Annette  Cramsie,  in  1852.  She  was 
the  daughter  of  an  Ulster  Irishman  who  had  a  surname  derived, 
some  said,  from  a  French  origin — Cramsie,  from  "Cramoisi." 
Mr.  Cramsie,  who  had  come  from  a  legendary  estate  known  as 
"Bally  Cramsie"  (I  used  to  gaze  with  awe  at  a  hundred-years-old 
plan  thus  named,  hung  up  in  my  step-grandmother's  house  )^ 
became  in  course  of  time  a  publisher  and  newspaper  proprietor 
in  Belfast.  His  wife,  my  step-grandmother,  was  a  Miss  Cross- 
ley;  and  after  her  husband's  death  had  moved  to  Dublin  with 
those  of  her  children  who  had  not  married  and  gone  out  into  the 
world.  My  father  was  introduced  to  her  when  he  came  over 
to  Dublin  about  1850.  He  fell  in  love  with  her  daughter  Annette, 
and  they  were  married  at  Dublin  on  December  8,  1852,  when 
my  father  was  thirty-three  years  of  age. 

My  grandfather  who  died  in  1865  was  John  Johnston,  for 
many  years  a  Secretary  to  the  Royal  Exchange  Assurance  Com- 
pany. My  great-grandfather,  George  Dell  Johnston,  was  born 
about  1760  and  died  in  1840;  and  my  great-great-grandfather 
was  John  Johnston,  a  "burgher"  of  Glasgow,  a  wool-factor,  and 
at  one  time  a  wealthy  man  who  claimed  to  be  descended  from  an 
Earl  of  Annandale. 


2 


THE  STORY  OF  MY  LIFE 


When  the  last  Marquis  of  Annandale  died  in  the  latter  part  of 
the  eighteenth  century,  John  Johnston  sought  to  prove  his  descent 
from  one  of  the  earlier  Earls,  and  consequently  his  claim  not 
only  to  that  title  but  to  some  of  the  estates.  He  journeyed  to 
London  in  the  middle  of  the  eighteenth  century,  and  visited  Birm- 
ingham on  his  way  thither.  Here  he  met  a  Miss  Sophia  Scott, 
co-heiress  with  her  sister  of  considerable  Birmingham  property. 
He  married  her  and  applied  some  of  her  money  in  trying  to  prove 
his  Annandale  claim.  He  was  not  successful  and  got  at  last  into 
money  difficulties,  from  which  he  was  relieved  by  his  son  George 
(then  an  ensign  in  the  56th  Regiment)  who  sold  some  land  he 
had  inherited  on  the  outskirts  of  Glasgow  and  applied  some  of 
the  money  to  his  father's  relief.  He  is  said  in  the  family  legends 
to  have  obtained  thirty  thousand  pounds  by  this  sale  for  what 
— I  learned  a  hundred  and  ten  years  later — was  valued  in  the 
present  age  at  about  a  million  sterling. 

This  George  Dell  Johnston  was  a  handsome  man  who  fought 
with  distinction  at  the  siege  of  Gibraltar  in  1782.  A  few  years 
later  he  came  home  and  married  a  Miss  Author,  a  Yorkshire 
woman.  He  is  said  to  have  been  very  like  in  appearance  to  his 
eldest  grandson,  my  father.  After  his  marriage.  Captain  George 
Johnston  settled  at  Enfield,  to  the  north  of  London,  but  appar- 
ently also  had  some  interest  or  holding  in  Kensington.  He  was 
one  of  the  principal  promoters  or  founders  of  the  Kensington 
Volunteers,  a  corps  which  was  represented  at  the  latter  end  of  the 
nineteenth  century  by  a  Middlesex  regiment,  whose  annual  regi- 
mental prizes  I  distributed  about  twenty  years  ago  as  a  faint, 
far-off  echo  of  my  great-grandfather's  interest  in  these  civic  sol- 
diers. But  in  the  last  part  of  his  life  he  moved  to  a  house  near 
Kennington  Lane,  at  that  time  almost  in  the  country  to  the 
south  of  London.  In  this  neighborhood  his  eldest  son,  my 
grandfather,  met  Louisa  Brookes,  the  daughter  of  a  surgeon, 
Robert  Brookes;  married  her  (in  1817),  and  in  course  of  time 
became  the  parent  of  eight  children,  of  whom  my  father — John 
Brookes  Johnston — was  the  eldest. 

My  grandfather  was  wont  to  discredit  himself  with  the  repu- 


THE  STORY  OF  MY  LIFE 


3 


tation  of  having  been  rather  a  wild  young  man  till  he  married, 
in  order  to  enhance  his  later  piety.  But  the  wildness  can  not 
have  gone  much  beyond  mild  gambling  with  cards  and  an  interest 
in  suburban  horse-racing.  It  certainly  did  not  include  excess  in 
alcohol,  because,  curiously  enough  for  those  times — the  eight- 
eenth century  and  beginning  of  the  nineteenth — my  Scottish 
forebears,  back,  even,  traditionally  to  the  Glasgow  wool-factor, 
seem  to  have  had  a  dislike  to  alcohol  which  I  have  fully  inherited. 
My  father  till  the  closing  years  of  his  life  (when  constrained 
thereto  by  medical  advice)  never  took  wine  or  spirits,  though  he 
kept  a  good  cellar  from  an  instinct  of  hospitality.  My  grand- 
father and  his  ancestors  up  to  the  Glasgow  wool-factor  were 
water-drinkers,  except  on  great  occasions  when  they  drank  wine 
almost  as  a  religious  act.  As  a  family  they  could  not  even 
stomach  beer;  it  produced  headaches  and  other  troubles.  Per- 
sonally I  liked  its  taste,  though  I  loathed  that  of  spirits  under  any 
label ;  just  as  I  delighted  in  the  different  flavors  and  degrees  of 
sweetness  or  nuttiness  of  the  various  wines,  but  I  never  could 
drink  more  than  a  small  quantity  without  feeling  disagreeably 
afYected.  This  family  trait  in  our  own  section  of  the  Johnston 
clan/  this  inherent  dislike  of  any  fermented  drink,  was  almost 
looked  upon  as  an  afHiction  a  hundred  to  a  hundred  and  fifty 

^  The  Johnstons  were  evidently  a  most  prolific  stock.  They  started, 
traditionally,  with  a  Norman  knight  named  Jehan  or  John  who  offered 
his  services  to  a  king  of  Scotland  in  the  twelfth  century,  and  was  rewarded 
with  lands  in  Dumfriesshire  near  the  English  borders.  He  built  a  village 
there  which  was  called  "John's  town"  (Johnston).  His  descendants  or 
clansmen  to  whom  a  pattern  in  plaids  was  assigned,  spread  far  and  wide 
during  the  succeeding  centuries.  They  extended  over  Lowland  Scotland, 
entered  England  in  the  reign  of  James  I.,  settled  in  Southwest  Wales — 
Pembrokeshire — and  invaded  the  north  of  Ireland  under  Cromwell  and 
William  HI.  In  the  eighteenth  and  early  nineteenth  centuries  people  of 
this  name  migrated  to  the  southeastern  states  of  the  American  Union, 
and  a  Johnston  was  one  of  the  leading  Southern  generals  in  the  American 
Civil  War  (have  conversed  with  the  son  of  this  general  in  Alabama  and 
was  struck  by  his  facial  resemblance  to  my  relations).  Johnstons  from 
Ireland  and  Scotland  engaged  in  the  wine  trade  with  France  after  1815. 
There  is  now  quite  a  colony  of  French-speaking  Johnstons  round  about 
Bordeaux,  who  for  two  or  more  generations  have  been  French  subjects 
and  have  lost  the  use  of  English.  In  the  eighteenth  century  the  spelling 
of  the  name  varied — sometimes  in  the  same  individual — as  Johnstone.  But 
the  Johnsons — poor  souls  ! — were  quite  distinct. 


4 


THE  STORY  OF  MY  LIFE 


years  ago;  and  I  believe  was  noted  pityingly  and  rather  dispar- 
agingly of  my  great-grandfather  in  the  army,  only  to  be  atoned 
for  by  his  good  looks  and  courage. 

He  would  seem  in  every  way — George  Dell  Johnston — to  have 
been  a  pleasant  person.  But  I  doubt  whether  the  same  could 
have  been  said  about  my  grandfather  by  his  contemporaries, 
though  he  may  have  been  an  upright  man  of  business.  He  mar- 
ried in  1817  when  he  was  twenty-seven.  Some  ten  years  later 
he  was  perturbed  over  religious  questions,  as  were  so  many  of 
the  middle  class  in  the  early  nineteenth  century. 

The  Napoleonic  wars  were  followed  by  a  period  of  about 
twenty  years  during  which  there  was  a  great  revival  of  interest 
in  the  Christian  religion,  which  in  England,  throughout  the 
eighteenth  century  (save  for  the  Wesleyan  movement),  had 
faded  away  into  cosy  pomps  and  ceremonies,  and  in  the  minds 
of  some  great  thinkers  of  Britain,  France,  Holland,  Germany 
and  Italy  had  ceased  to  be.  Napoleon  had  restored  it  officially 
in  France  while  remaining  inwardly  a  skeptic.  In  Britain  and 
North  Ireland,  however,  a  hundred  years  ago  it  had  a  rebirth. 
Science  was  still  far  too  weak  to  dominate  men's  minds;  and 
even  the  greatest  thinkers  in  our  land  retained  an  unquestioning 
faith  in  the  Bible  as  the  Word  of  God,  or  at  any  rate  pretended 
to  have  done  so  and  confessed  their  unfaith  to  no  one. 

Among  the  notable  personages  of  the  day — 1820  to  1860 — 
was  Henry  Drummond,  the  cadet  of  a  Scottish  noble  house, 
the  head  of  a  great  Bank,  and  intermittently  and  latterly  an 
M.P.  of  independent  position:  pedantic,  dogmatic,  scholarly, 
witty,  pompous,  puerile  and  obstinate.  He  really  created,  molded 
the  sect  to  which  my  grandfather  lent  his  support. 

In  the  Lowlands  of  Scotland  there  had  arisen  Edward  Irving 
(born  in  1792)  who  in  his  thirtieth  year  had  been  chosen  as 
Presbyterian  minister  to  the  Caledonian  Church  in  London,  with 
the  Duke  of  York  to  hear  him  in  his  first  London  sermon. 
Although  he  had  a  very  pronounced  squint  it  does  not  seem  to 
have  provoked  ridicule,  and  is  referred  to  as  "a  singular  obliquity 
of  vision."    His  appearance  is  described  by  contemporaries  as 


THE  STORY  OF  MY  LIFE  5 

most  striking;  of  an  "almost  colossal  stature,  with  raven  black 
hair  reaching  nearly  to  his  shoulders,  pale  sunken  cheeks,  an 
expression  of  austere  pride  and  conscious  sanctity."  He  seemed 
a  god-like  being  to  my  father  who  first  saw  him  in  1831  and  to 
the  end  of  his  own  life  regarded  him  as  a  man  of  supernormal 
powers. 

Henry  Drummond  came  to  hear  Irving  preach,  and  the  two  of 
them — Drummond  being  the  stronger  agent  after  the  first  few 
years — fashioned  "the  Catholic  Apostolic  Church,"  and  Drum- 
mond took  the  leading  part  in  composing  its  Liturgy. 

Irving  died  in  December,  1834,  at  the  age  of  forty-two,  appar- 
ently from  phthisis — "consumption" — "a  broken-down,  worn- 
out  old  man,  hoary  as  with  extreme  age:"  broken-hearted,  it 
would  almost  seem,  at  not  being  allowed  to  marry  Jane  Welsh, 
afterwards  Mrs.  Carlyle.^  He  was  buried  in  the  crypt  of  Glasgow 
Cathedral,  after  having,  nevertheless,  been  cast  out  of  the  Pres- 
byterian Church  for  heresies,  and  in  a  measure  discarded  by  the 
adherents  of  the  new  Catholic  Apostolic  Church,  born  of  Irving's 
sermons. 

My  grandfather  was  converted  to  this  new  and  unnamed 
sect  from  the  first  sermon  he  heard  Irving  preach  in  1831.  And 
my  father  as  a  boy  of  twelve  heard  the  same  discourse  and 
obediently  followed  the  conviction  of  his  parents  that  herein  was 
a  great  revelation.  His  recollection  of  Irving  preaching  in 
1831-1833  in  the  large  studio  of  Benjamin  West,  which  became 
the  Newman  Street  Chapel,  was  intense  all  through  the  sixty- 
three  years  that  followed.  At  the  age  of  thirteen  and  fourteen 
he  saw  nothing  ridiculous  or  preposterous  in  the  pompous  and 
uninspired  exclamations  interrupting  Irving's  discourses  from  the 
lips  of  Henry  Drummond,^  from  the  eccentric  prophet,  Taplin,  or 

1  This  at  any  rate  was  the  legend  started  by  Mrs.  Oliphant  and  Mrs.  Carl)'le, 
although  it  is  not  easily  reconciled  with  the  facts  that  Irving  married  a  young 
Scotchwoman  (Isabella  Martin)  in  1823  and  had  by  her  a  family  of  several 
children,  one  of  whom  (Mrs.  Gardiner)  I  came  to  know. 

2  For  instance,  "Look  to  it — look  to  it.  Ye  have  been  warned !  Ah !  San- 
ballat,  Sanballat,  Sanballat,  the  Horonite,  the  Moabite,  the  Ammonite!  Ah! 
confederate,  confederate  with  the  Horonite!  Ah!  look  ye  to  it,  look  ye  to 
it!"  This  was  the  type  of  Drummond's  "inspired"  utterances.  (See  Mrs. 
Oliphant's  Life  of  Irving.) 


6 


THE  STORY  OF  MY  LIFE 


from  the  excitable  female,  Miss  E.  Cardale,  who  was  so  unsub- 
duable  as  a  prophetess  in  Irving's  chapel,  with  her  wordy 
condemnations  of  her  brother  prophet,  Mr.  Taplin,  that  she 
distracted  attention  from  Irving's  eloquent  discourse,  and  some- 
times reduced  him  to  silence. 

My  grandfather  from  the  early  'thirties  onward  divided  his 
interests  very  sharply.  As  regards  "worldly"  affairs  there  was 
the  Royal  Exchange  and  its  insurance  business,  quite  out  of  touch 
with  the  Second  Coming  of  Christ,  a  theme  scarcely  even  to  be 
discussed  in  the  City;  but  in  regard  to  spiritual  matters  there 
was  the  implicit  belief  that  at  any  moment  the  Redeemer  might 
appear  in  the  sky  over  England,  or  some  other  part  of  Northwest 
Europe,  and  the  two  hundred  and  forty-four  thousand  of  the 
Elect  would  be  caught  up  to  meet  Him  in  their  earthly  bodies 
(being  absolved  from  death),  and  the  Millennium  would  begin 
with  Christ's  reign  on  earth.  It  was  assumed  of  course  that  the 
Catholic  Apostolic  Church  by  that  time  would  have  increased 
in  number  of  adherents  sufificiently  (it  never  did  so)  to  provide 
from  its  most  perfected  members  the  number  of  the  Elect.  All 
else  of  other  Christian  churches  and  sects  must  die  and  gain 
"Heaven"  through  some  more  or  less  painful  trial — martyrdom 
under  "the  Beast,"  in  most  cases.  The  least  unfortunate  among 
them  would  form  a  body  identified  with  the  Two  Witnesses  of 
the  Book  of  the  Revelation.  Gradually  the  Two  Witnesses  nar- 
rowed into  identification  with  the  Church  of  England;  for  as 
the  Catholic  Apostolic  Church  "grew  up"  and  surveyed  the 
religious  thinkers  of  Europe  it  could  only  find  affinity  of  thought 
and  sentiment  in  the  Established  Church  of  England,  Wales, 
and  (in  those  days)  of  Ireland.  Though  its  Liturgy,  a  very 
scholarly  production,  completed  during  the  'forties  and  'fifties, 
had  incorporated  much  of  the  Greek  and  Roman  ritual  and 
impressed  the  Low  Church  examiner  as  "papistical,"  the  senti- 
ment of  the  Catholic  Apostolic  Church  tended  almost  passion- 
ately towards  the  Anglican  High  Church  and  not  to  the  Presby- 
terianism  from  which  Irving  had  emerged.  Soon  after  Irving's 
death  the  sporadic  hysteriomaniacs  of  Southwest  Scotland,  utter- 


THE  STORY  OF  MY  LIFE 


7 


ers  of  unknown  tongues,  the  miraculously-healed  of  mysterious 
diseases  who  had  joined  the  new  Church  in  London,  quarreled 
with  its  ornate  services  and  hierarchy  of  clergy  and  faded  away. 
It  was  Henry  Drummond,  whatever  might  be  asserted  and  inter- 
polated, who  had  brought  this  Church  or  sect  into  being.  He 
had  molded  its  Liturgy  and  ceremonial  so  as  to  include  the  most 
striking  and  effective  prayers,  anthems,  songs,  ceremonies,  and 
services  of  the  Churches  of  Rome  and  Greece,  and  tempered  it 
with  the  sobriety  and  propriety  of  the  Church  of  England. 

In  April,  1855,  my  father's  first  wife,  Annette,  died  of  puer- 
peral fever  a  short  time  after  giving  birth  to  my  brother  George. 
In  the  summer  of  1857,  my  father  married  Esther  Laetitia  Ham- 
ilton, and  I  was  the  first  child  of  their  marriage. 

My  mother's  mother  was  the  only  child  of  John  Mainwaring 
and  his  wife,  Mary  Flower.  My  grandmother  could  never  have 
been  described  as  pretty,  though  she  was  in  after  life  both  witty 
and  clever.  She  had  too  straight  and  thin-lipped  a  mouth,  yet 
she  attracted  suitors  and  was,  when  quite  young,  married  by  a 
man  reputed  to  be  of  considerable  wealth  who  was  some  twenty 
years  older  than  herself.  Previous  to  her  marriage,  she  had  been 
noted  for  her  skill  in  drawing  and  design  and  had  been  a  student 
at  the  Royal  Academy  Schools.  Her  father  was  seemingly  a 
jeweler  who  had  a  place  of  business  in  Fleet  Street.  He  claimed 
to  be  descended  from  the  only  child  born  to  the  great  actress, 
Nance  Oldfield,  by  her  union  with  Arthur  Maynwaring,  early  in 
the  eighteenth  century. 

Arthur  Maynwaring,  a  "Life"  of  whom  I  possess  from  the 
remains  of  my  grandmother's  library,  was  a  member  of  the 
Mainwaring  family  of  South  Cheshire  and  North  Shropshire. 
He  was  what  would  be  called  a  "civil  servant"  of  the  Queen  Anne 
period,  with  a  quavering  attachment  to  the  Stuart  dynasty.  His 
son,  Arthur,  was  apparently  my  great-great-great-grandfather; 
and  consequently  the  mother  of  this  Arthur — Nance  or  Anne 
Oldfield,  the  great  actress  of  the  Queen  Anne  period — was  my 
ancestress  in  this  direction. 


8 


THE  STORY  OF  MY  LIFE 


Robert  Hamilton  was  the  son  of  a  Scottish  artist,  Alexander 
Hamilton  of  Edinburgh,  who  seems  to  have  attained  some  fame 
as  a  portrait-painter  in  Scotland  in  the  eighteenth  century.  His 
son,  Robert,  went  out  early  in  life  as  a  cadet  or  clerk  at  Calcutta 
for  the  East  India  Company.  Apparently  he  did  not  remain  long 
in  this  service.  Hazy  reports  accredited  or  discredited  him  with 
acquiring  as  his  share  of  loot  in  warfare  or  by  more  prosaic 
means  a  supply  of  diamonds  and  rubies  from  the  coffers  of  some 
Indian  prince;  and  with  this  nucleus  of  valuable  stones  he 
founded  the  jewelers'  firm  of  Hamilton  at  Calcutta.  John  Main- 
waring,  the  jeweler  in  Fleet  Street,  became  their  London  agent, 
or  at  any  rate  transacted  much  business  with  them.  In  this  way, 
when  Robert  Hamilton  returned  to  England  at  about  forty  years 
of  age  and  with  a  handsome  fortune,  he  met  Mary  Mainwaring — 
a  student  then  at  the  Royal  Academy  and  a  miniature  painter — 
and  married  her.  They  lived  at  Brighton  (where  my  mother  was 
born)  and  at  Norwood,  where  my  grandfather  purchased  an 
estate  known  as  "Bloomfield"  which  was  still  in  existence,  with 
about  twelve  acres  of  garden  and  woodland,  twenty  years  ago. 

The  marriage  took  place  about  1826,  and  was  followed  by  a 
family  of  at  least  eleven  children  who  lived  to  maturity.  My 
grandfather  died  in  1850  or  1851.  Mrs.  Hamilton  was  attracted 
by  the  tenets  of  the  Catholic  Apostolic  Church,  and  thus  came  to 
know  my  father's  family  when  she  lived  at  or  near  Rochester  in 
the  early  'fifties.  My  father's  younger  brother  married  the  eld- 
est of  her  daughters,  and  my  father  himself  espoused  the 
younger,  Esther,  my  mother.  From  my  earliest  consciousness  I 
delighted  in  my  grandmother  Hamilton.  She  was  the  sort  of 
woman  who  entranced  children  with  her  fairy  stories;  and  she 
was  a  remarkable  artist  in  black  and  white,  and  famous  for  her 
"illustrated  envelopes."  These  probably  would  be  voted  nuisances 
now ;  but  in  the  early  days  of  frequent  correspondence  brought 
about  by  penny  postage,  they  were  thought  very  original ;  and  in 
the  case  of  those  designed  by  her  were  really  charming  pictures 
in  penmanship.  For  the  last  fourteen  years  of  her  life  she  lived 
near  Carisbrook  in  the  Isle  of  Wight. 


.Iho-vt  :  Robert  Hamilton,  the  au- 
thor's maternal  grandfather. 

Bclo'iv:  The  author's  paternal 
grandfather,  John  Johnston  (1863). 


Above:  Portrait  of  Arthur  Mayn- 
waring,  the  author's  great-great-great- 
great  grandfather  (about  1710). 

BfloTc:  Portrait  of  the  author's  father 
(about  1890). 


THE  STORY  OF  MY  LIFE 


9 


The  first  thing  I  remember  in  life  was  at  the  time  of  my  fourth 
birthday,  the  summer  of  1862.  I  was  walking  complacently 
clown  the  tree-shaded  garden  of  a  house  at  the  top  of  Camberwell 
Grove,  and  scratching  legs  and  wrists  which  had  raised  flushed 
eruptions  on  them.  .  .  .  "Why,  child!"  exclaimed  my  nurse, 
Diana  Barber,  "you've  got  the  measles  again !"  So  I  was  borne 
off  and  put  to  bed  in  broad  daylight.  Then  a  short  interval  of 
time — for  the  measles  to  run  their  course — and  I  was  staying  on 
an  opulent  farmstead  at  Milton,  near  Lymington  in  Hampshire. 
The  farmer  apparently  bred  peafowl.  There  was  a  great  straw 
rick  yard,  and  a  large  but  kind  farmer's  boy  named  Peckham. 
Peckham  was  apparently  released  from  some  of  his  farm  work 
during  my  stay  and  allowed  to  carry  me  about  and  lure  the  pea- 
cocks up  for  my  admiring  examination.  It  was  as  though  at  this 
early  age  I  had  been  inducted  into  a  new  worship.  The  next 
two  years  of  my  life  were  given  up  mainly  to  the  drawing  of 
peafowl  in  ink  and  pencil.  I  renewed  acquaintance  with  these 
most  intelligent  and  beautiful  birds  in  Kent,  a  few  years  later, 
and  again  in  Tunis  in  1879-80,  saw  them  wild  and  half-tamed  in 
India  in  1895,  imported  them  myself  into  Central  Africa,  kept 
them  in  the  Consulate  grounds  when  I  was  transferred  to  Tunis 
in  1897;  and  ever  since  I  made  a  permanent  home  in  Sussex  have 
had  them  there. 

In  1863  my  parents  moved  to  another  house  of  my  grand- 
father's— Sutton  Lodge,  Cowley  Road,  Brixton.  Here  there 
stood  a  white  stucco  house  different  in  appearance  to  the  others 
in  the  countrylike  road.  Sutton  Lodge  was  supposed  to  have 
existed  before  there  was  any  Cowley  Road,  to  have  been  part 
of  some  estate  "out  in  the  country."  Certainly  in  the  'sixties 
Brixton  ended  in  that  direction,  and  at  the  back  of  the  long 
garden  there  was  a  row  of  tall  trees,  a  ditch  and  an  open  space 
known  as  "the  Field,"  which  produced  corn  and  potatoes  and 
grazing  ground,  and  stretched  away  without  a  building  to  Den- 
mark Hill,  Heme  Hill  and  Tulse  Hill.  In  the  next  house  to  the 
right  lived  my  grandparents ;  in  the  house  to  the  left  my  great- 
uncle  Henry  and  his  wife. 


10 


THE  STORY  OF  MY  LIFE 


I  disliked  my  grandfather  from  my  first  realization  of  him 
when  I  was  five  or  six.  He  by  that  time — poor  soul — was  suffer- 
ing from  the  effects  of  a  paralytic  stroke;  and  I  dare  say  my 
vocal  and  bodily  activities  got  on  his  nerves  as  he  lay  in  the 
invalid  chair  in  his  garden.   But  he  died  somewhere  about  1865. 

When  I  reached  the  age  of  six  I  was  sent  to  a  little  school 
hard  by,  in  the  same  Cowley  Road,  which  was  kept  by  a  mother 
and  three  daughters  of  the  name  of  Jones.  And  here  I  learned 
a  great  deal  in  a  short  space  of  time :  to  read  and  write  and  spell ; 
to  add,  subtract  and  divide.  At  the  age  of  eight  I  went  as  their 
first  scholar  to  a  delightful  group  of  ladies,  the  Misses  Selby,  who 
after  their  father's  death  had  decided  to  turn  a  charming  house 
they  occupied  at  Surbiton  into  a  school  for  little  boys.  I  was 
their  first  pupil,  and  for  about  six  months  their  only  one.  Then 
scholars  came  in  numbers;  and  when  in  1867  I  was  taken  away 
to  be  placed  much  nearer  home  at  a  school  kept  by  the  Misses 
Pace  in  Camberwell  Grove  I  was  miserable.  The  two  sisters 
Pace  were  thoroughly  nice  women,  and  their  school  had  already 
attained  a  certain  local  celebrity:  amongst  other  noteworthy 
pupils  had  been  Joseph  Chamberlain.  But  the  Misses  Selby  were 
something  quite  out  of  the  common  as  schoolmistresses.  There 
were  four  of  them,  and  they  had  traveled,  had  studied  music  and 
painting,  had  intelligent  views  on  political  questions,  knew  some- 
thing about  botany,  and  even  dared  in  the  hearing  at  any  rate 
of  one  pupil  tremblingly  to  discuss  the  bearings  of  Darwin's 
Origin  of  Species. 

It  is  curious,  looking  on  Surbiton  as  it  is  to-day,  a  smug  and 
asphalted  suburb,  to  reflect  that  in  the  'sixties  it  was  a  country 
village.  The  Selbys'  school  was  on  its  Norbiton  side,  and  five 
minutes'  walk  from  the  house  one  was  in  unspoiled  country  with 
a  profusion  of  wild  flowers,  reedy  ponds,  rushy  commons,  flocks 
of  geese,  farmsteads,  watercress  beds,  and  little  hint  of  Town 
being  within  eight  or  nine  miles.  I  certainly  had  my  initiation 
into  country  life  here;  was  taught  as  much  botany  as  I  could 
retain,  much  about  wild  birds,  about  the  Thames,  about  land- 
scape painting  and  the  French  language.    Having  lived  at  one 


THE  STORY  OF  MY  LIFE 


11 


time  abroad,  the  Selbys  were  competent  to  teach  French  and 
even  Italian.  By  the  time  I  was  nine  I  could  speak  French 
passably,  and  was  learning  it  from  the  French-written  books. ^ 

Why  I  was  not  allowed  to  remain  at  this  school,  which  grew 
into  quite  a  large  establishment  before  long,  I  do  not  know.  It 
was  not  due  to  a  desire  for  economy,  because  my  father  was  now 
quite  a  well-to-do  man.  My  grandfather  was  dead  and  my  father 
had  inherited  half  what  he  had  to  leave  and  was  drawing  between 
two  and  three  thousand  pounds  a  year  from  the  Royal  Insurance 
Company,  whose  London  Secretary  he  had  been  since  about  1850. 
He  shared  to  the  full  my  passionate  love  of  the  country,  very 
slightly  slaked  by  a  view  over  unbuilt-on  Brixton.  It  was  "the 
Church"  which  held  him  to  the  outskirts  of  London:  the  Catholic 
Apostolic  Church  in  Trinity  Square  in  the  Borough  of  South- 
wark.  He  believed  unshakably  that  "the  Lord"  might  come  at 
any  time ;  that  at  His  Second  Coming  those  of  the  Elect  who  had 
held  their  faith  would  be  caught  up  into  the  air  to  meet  Him, 
would,  without  dying,  be  subtly  changed  into  immortal  beings, 
and — apparently — would  return  to  earth  with  the  Son  of  God, 
to  assist  Him  in  governing  the  planet  for  the  Millennial  Period ; 
after  which  this  poor  little  world  would  be  destroyed  by  fire,  or 
at  any  rate  cease  to  interest  the  Creator  of  all  things. 

If  any  one  not  of  the  Catholic  Apostolic  Church  survives,  who 
knew  my  father  in  his  later  years  at  home  or  abroad,  who  worked 
with  him  in  the  City  or  came  out  to  visit  him  at  our  home  in 
the  suburbs,  and  reads  this  passage,  he  may  be  surprised.  He 
can  remember  an  acute  man  of  business  who  set  right  this  and 
that  tangle ;  a  fellow-traveler  on  the  continent  or  in  South  Africa, 
Asia  Minor,  the  United  States;  a  member  of  the  Royal  Geo- 
graphical Society,  following  African  exploration  shrewdly  and 
with  some  knowledge  of  African  problems;  but  they  will  prob- 
ably be  quite  unaware  of  his  having  held  these  hopes  of  the 
Second  Coming — hopes  so  inconsistent  with  the  extension  of 
railways,  the  enormous  development  of  the  United  States,  the 

1  Helen  Selby,  the  last  surviving  of  the  four  sisters,  did  not  die  till  the 
beginning  of  1923,  somewhere  about  ninety  years  of  age. 


12 


THE  STORY  OF  MY  LIFE 


invention  of  air-distended  tires  on  wheels,  of  the  bicycle  and 
motor,  the  aeroplane  and  airship,  the  giant  steamer  going  at 
thirty  knots  an  hour:  in  short  the  enormous  development  of 
Man's  knowledge  and  his  conquest  of  this  planet  which  has 
taken  place  since  Edward  Iving,  Henry  Drummond,  John  Bate 
Cardale  and  John  Tudor  met  to  pray  and  commune  at  Albury 
House. 

Much  seemed  to  happen  to  me  between  the  autumn  of  the 
hottest  summer  on  record — 1868 — and  the  autumn  of  1869, 
when  I  w^as  over  eleven  years  old.  I  had  had  scarlet  fever  rather 
badly  in  the  summer  of  1868,  and  had  nearly  died  afterwards 
from  an  internal  complication.  On  return  to  London  in  Sep- 
tember, 1868,  it  was  enjoined  on  my  parents  by  the  doctor  that 
I  should  have  a  year's  rest  from  schooling,  a  full  twelve  months 
to  be  spent  in  idleness. 

This  was  one  of  the  happiest  times  I  can  remember.  A  younger 
sister  of  my  mother  had  come  to  live  with  us,  prior  to  her  mar- 
riage in  1869  to  my  father's  brother,  a  pioneer  colonist  in 
Vancouver  Island.  She  was  a  good  water-color  painter  and 
wanted  to  have  further  training  as  an  artist.  So  she  got  into 
relations  with  the  South  Lambeth  School  of  Art,  and  came  to 
know  a  person  remarkable  in  those  days:  John  Sparkes.  My 
constant  plea  to  accompany  her  and  to  spend  part  of  my  leisure 
learning  to  draw  resulted  in  my  coming  to  know  Mr.  Sparkes 
before  I  was  eleven,  and  retaining  him  as  a  friend  almost  to 
the  end  of  his  life  in  1908.  In  1869  he  was  a  singularly  hand- 
some man  of  what  we  liked  then  to  consider  the  "Saxon"  type. 

Those  were  very  Anglo-Saxon  days  in  London  and  perhaps 
elsewhere  in  the  British  Isles.  Kingsley  had  just  written  Here- 
ward,  the  Last  of  the  English;  Freeman  had  become  enthusiastic 
about  the  Saxons;  and  historians  generally  decried  the  Kelts. 
The  South  Lambeth  students,  till  Mr.  Sparkes  left  them  for  pro- 
motion to  South  Kensington,  liked  to  think  that  in  him  they  had 
a  peculiarly  Saxon  leader.  The  only  thing  that  perplexed  me 
about  him  in  those  early  days — and  seemed  so  irreconcilable  with 
my  after-impressions — was  the  assertion  of  another  aunt — a 


THE  STORY  OF  MY  LIFE 


13 


Cramsie,  also  an  art  student — that  Sparkes  was  a  Swedenborgian 
in  religion. 

Another  decisive  landmark  in  the  early  summer  of  1869  was 
my  first  visit  to  Rochester.  My  mother  had  received  most  of 
her  education  at  Eastgate  House  in  Rochester  High  Street,  in 
those  days  and  perhaps  far  back  into  the  eighteenth  century  a 
famous  girls'  school.  Some  time  in  the  early  'eighties  its  struc- 
ture and  appearance  as  a  town  dwelling  of  Elizabethan  times  or 
the  earlier  Tudor  period,  together  with  Dickens's  affection  for  it 
(as  evidenced  by  his  allusions  to  it  in  his  early  essays,  and  his 
idealization  of  it  as  "The  Nuns'  House"  in  Edwin  Drood), 
caused  it  to  be  bought  and  turned  to  the  more  appropriate  pur- 
pose of  a  Rochester  Museum.  But  for  a  good  many  years  it 
had  been  tenanted  or  owned  by  two  or  three  ladies  of  the  Dutch 
or  Flemish  name  of  "ten  Broncken-Kaartje."  This  lengthy 
surname  had  long  been  turned  locally  into  "the  Miss  Brunkers," 
and  so  persisted  in  that  form  that  I  am  not  quite  certain  of  my 
transcription  of  their  real  name.  But  it  was  a  justly  celebrated 
school  and  very  like  Dickens's  description,  the  resemblance  even 
extending  of  Miss  Twinkleton  to  the  principal  Miss  "Brunker." 

At  this  school  my  mother  had  formed  a  friendship  for  Eliza- 
beth L.,  one  of  the  dearest  and  most  remarkable  women  I  have 
ever  met.  She  had  been  a  bridesmaid  at  my  mother's  wedding 
in  1857,  and  when  I  was  two  years  old  I  had  been  taken  down 
on  a  visit  to  the  L.'s  country  home  at  Nashenden,  three  miles  out 
of  Rochester :  thereafter  had  been  given  a  promise  that  as  soon 
as  I  was  old  enough  to  go  on  a  visit  by  myself,  I  should  be  asked 
to  stay.  Accordingly,  in  July,  1869,  came  the  invitation,  and  my 
first  train  journey  all  by  myself  (though  "under  the  care  of  the 
guard")  to  Rochester.  She  met  me  at  the  old  station  by  the 
bridge,  and  opposite  her  and  her  mother  I  was  driven  out  in  an 
open  carriage  to  Nashenden,  I  remember  the  punctiliousness 
with  which  I  put  on  a  pair  of  dark  green  kid  gloves  which  had 
been  taken  off  in  the  train,  and  much  of  our  conversation  as  we 
drove  out  the  three  miles  along  St.  Margaret's  and  the  Borstal 
Road.  All  was  country,  unadulterated  country  then,  directly  you 
had  passed  St.  Margaret's  Church.  .  ,.,  . 


14 


THE  STORY  OF  MY  LIFE 


A  pony  to  ride,  a  mazy  flower-garden  to  thread,  with  such  an 
abundance  and  variety  of  flowering  plants  as  seem  to  my  memory 
to  have  forestalled  the  floral  developments  of  the  'eighties  and 
'nineties;  arbors  to  take  tea  in — tea  accompanied  by  bread  and 
honey  from  the  hives  hard  by;  cows  to  be  milked  and  new  milk 
to  be  drunk — almost  intoxicating  and  sweet,  like  new  wine ;  hills 
to  climb,  woods  to  penetrate,  straw  stacks  to  ascend  and  slide 
down.  We  had  breakfasts  of  amplitude;  dinners  in  the  middle 
of  the  day;  and  tea-suppers  at  seven.  There  were  wonderful 
provision  cupboards  in  the  farmhouse  dining-room,  cupboards 
with  which  I  was  reported  to  have  fallen  in  love  at  the  age  of 
two,  cupboards  so  large  that  even  at  eleven  I  could  walk  about 
in  them,  cupboards  holding  only  slightly  in  reserve  incredible 
stores  of  crystallized  fruits,  rich  biscuits,  currant  cakes,  nuts, 
damson  cheeses,  and  brandied  cherries. 

Once  I  fell  over  the  pony's  head  trying  to  do  something 
unusual  in  the  stack  yard,  the  pony  snapped  his  rein  and  ran  away 
to  the  front  door,  so  that  Miss  L.'s  father  for  three  minutes 
thought  I  must  be  lying  somewhere  killed  or  unconscious;  three 
times  in  six  weeks  I  had  brief  bilious  attacks  from  over-eating; 
and  once,  on  the  road  returning  to  Rochester,  near  St.  Margaret's 
Church — when  I  had  somehow  become  isolated  from  my  dear 
Miss  L. — I  was  attacked  and  rather  cruelly  handled  by  a  troop 
of  country  girls  returning  from  school.  Those  were  the  only 
disagreeable  incidents  I  can  recall  out  of  rapturous  six  weeks  in 
which  town  and  country  life  were  intermingled.  Sometimes  we 
stayed — mostly  from  Monday  to  Friday — at  the  farm;  the  rest 
of  the  week  at  the  town  house  in  Rochester,  a  house  on  the  New 
Road  at  the  top  of  Star  Hill,  with  a  convenient  steep  side  lane 
that  took  you  down  to  the  stables  first  and  next  to  the  High 
Street  running  on  toward  Chatham.  From  my  bedroom  window 
I  had  intriguingly  interesting  views  in  one  direction  down  the 
Medway — shipping,  war-works,  forts,  Admiralty  buildings — in 
another  across  a  high  garden  wall  into  the  intimacies  of  a  family 
of  large  ladies,  whose  names  but  not  whose  personalities  I  have 
forgotten.    In  proximity  to  their  somewhat  cloistered  dwelling 


THE  STORY  OF  MY  LIFE 


15 


was  a  large  flour-grinding  mill,  belonging  to  a  Mr.  Belsey  who 
afterwards  played  a  noteworthy  part  in  local  and  Liberal  politics. 
What  I  chiefly  remember  of  him  in  those  early  days  is  that  he 
was  a  Nonconformist  (though  respected  as  such),  had  a  cheery 
appearance,  but  was  much  given  to  prayer  and  praise,  interwoven 
with  large  teas  and  breakfasts,  and  had  an  immeasurable  respect 
for  Mr.  Gladstone. 

This  household  in  Rochester  in  1869  and  the  following  years 
seemed  to  me  in  advance  of  its  age  and  average.  Here,  at  least, 
were  middle-class  people  living  in  the  greatest  comfort,  with 
an  eye  to  furniture  that  discriminated  between  good  and  bad, 
an  eye  to  sanitation,  a  splendidly  endowed  bathroom,  or  even, 
I  fancy,  two  bathrooms,  one  for  males  and  the  other  for  females; 
and  a  library  with  a  range  of  volumes  that  stretched  from  the 
middle  of  the  eighteenth  to  the  middle  of  the  nineteenth  cen- 
turies. There  were  little  pairs  of  steps  which  could  be  moved 
by  a  child,  and  up  which  you  climbed  to  reach  the  books  from 
the  tiers  near  the  ceiling.  There  were  old  French  books  with 
the  quaintest  improprieties  little  understood  by  a  boy  of  eleven; 
there  were  learned  tomes  of  the  eighteen-thirties,  at  the  awaken- 
ing of  Science  and  modern  learning;  Latin  and  Greek  classics, 
and  translations  of  the  same;  novels  from  1840  to  1869;  some 
of  Darwin's  works,  Sir  Charles  Lyell's,  and  the  first  strivings 
after  evolution  problems ;  everything  that  Dickens  had  published 
short  of  Edwin  Drood,  the  entirety  of  Scott,  the  eight  volumes 
of  Buffon  on  Natural  History,  nearly  all  Bohn's  series  of  "clas- 
sics," even  to  the  Golden  Ass  of  Apuleius;  and  Gibbon's  Decline 
and  Fall.  Some  one  must  have  once  loved  this  library,  but  who 
it  was  I  never  heard.  The  father  of  the  L.'s,  though  a  remark- 
able man  who  left  his  mark  on  ungrateful  Rochester,  gave  them 
their  Castle  Gardens  and  freed  Castle,  was  several  times  Mayor, 
improved  their  gas,  their  roadways,  their  breweries,  their  mu- 
nicipal buildings,  hospitals  and  water  supply,  did  not  seem  much 
of  a  reader,  a  library  man.  Perhaps  he  had  been  so  when 
younger,  or  he  may  have  inherited  the  earlier  books  from  his 
father. 


16 


THE  STORY  OF  MY  LIFE 


The  L.'s  were  derived  from  two  sources:  Jews  who  settled  at 
Chatham  in  the  late  eighteenth  century  and  became  connected 
with  shipping  and  dealing  with  the  War  Office  and  Admiralty  in 
provisions;  and  several  Rochester  and  East  Kent  families,  old- 
fashioned  Anglicans  with  a  contempt  for  Nonconformity — solici- 
tors, farmers,  and  town  officials.  The  family  as  I  knew  it  was 
Church  of  England,  only  differing  as  to  whether  they  preferred 
the  Cathedral  (this  suited  the  males)  or  the  Evangelical  tendency 
of  St.  Nicholas  (this  was  preferred  by  the  females).  Mr.  L., 
the  father,  only  went  to  church  on  great  occasions — as  mayor  or 
alderman ;  Mrs.  L.,  the  mother,  never  went,  on  the  excuse  of 
health  delicacy;  the  two  sons  attended  the  Cathedral  morning 
service,  usually  for  municipal  reasons ;  and  the  daughters  devoted 
themselves  to  St.  Nicholas,  an  ancient  church  placed  with  Me- 
dieval nonchalance  just  outside  the  Cathedral  precincts.  The 
family  as  I  first  knew  it  consisted  of  four  daughters  and  two 
sons.  One  daughter — Annie — extraordinarily  pretty  as  I  deemed 
her  to  be — was  already  married  and  producing  children;  she 
came,  in  fact,  to  stay  with  her  parents  that  summer,  bringing  two 
nurses  and  two  small  children  and  the  constitution  of  an  incipient 
invalid.  Not  only  were  her  good  looks  patent  to  all  men,  but  she 
had  a  charming  manner,  which  I  gathered  from  overheard  female 
conversations  indicated  a  certain  degree  of  "falseness."  .  .  . 
"One  thing  to  your  face,  another  behind  your  back."  That  may 
have  been  so.  But  it  was  at  any  rate  alluring  to  have  so  much 
sweetness  and  discriminating  confidence  shown  in  your  presence, 
even  though  you  were  only  a  little  boy  in  knickerbockers.  She 
differed  from  her  other  sisters  in  exhibiting  a  flippancy  toward 
religion  which  at  once  attracted  me;  for  already  at  that  age  I 
was  beginning  to  dislike  all  this  running-down  of  our  earthly 
existence,  this  pretense  that  we  were  saving  up  for  something  far 
better  in  the  world  beyond  the  grave.  Then — for  1869 — I  sup- 
pose she  was  witty,  as  well  as  being  angelically  pretty.  I  thought 
the  little  shafts  she  aimed  deliciously  funny,  the  more  so  as  the 
person  aimed  at  was  sometimes  dense  enough  to  concur. 

Her  husband  we  should  have  described  in  these  days  as  "over- 


THE  STORY  OF  MY  LIFE 


17 


sexed."  He  was  a  great  big,  blond  man  with  a  terribly  hearty 
laugh  and  twinkling  blue  eyes,  a  prosperous  stock  broker,  or 
something  of  that  kind :  one  of  four  or  five  brothers,  very  Saxon, 
mostly  large  and  good-looking,  in  or  about  the  Army,  utterly 
immoral — as  I  came  to  know  them  to  be — who  all  of  them  made 
unhappy  marriages  through  their  own  infidelities.  I  believe  the 
only  one  of  them  who  attained  anything  like  old  age  was  the 
husband  of  Annie  N.,  but  he  wasted  his  substance  over  a  number 
of  other  women,  and  his  once  lovely  wife  died  separated  from 
him  and  embittered. 

But  we  were  not  to  foresee  that,  thirty  years  before  it  hap- 
pened; and  in  1869  no  one  seemed  happier  or  more  likely  to 
remain  happy  than  this  charmingly  pretty  young  woman.  .   .  . 

Amongst  other  characters  in  this  little  comedy  was  an  uncle  of 
the  L.'s  on  their  mother's  side:  Edward  Coles,  who  lived  in  a 
big  stern-looking  house  on  Star  Hill,  Coles  was  a  solicitor  with 
an  immense  local  practise.  He  was  a  fine-looking  man  of  about 
sixty,  said  to  have  married  young,  to  have  lost  his  wife  early,  and 
to  have  quarreled  with  his  only  son  on  account  of  an  unapproved 
marriage.  The  son  was  banished  to  the  Isle  of  Wight;  and  his 
father — a  Dickens  character  if  ever  there  were  one  in  actual  life 
— lived  on  in  cold  seclusion,  a  widower,  but  provided  with  a 
comely  looking  housekeeper,  a  large  house  very  difficult  to  enter 
and  explore,  even  to  his  rather  daunted  nephews  and  nieces,  a 
garden  enclosed  by  high  brick  walls,  where  there  were  gooseberry- 
bushes,  the  fruit  of  which  was  the  only  hospitality  I  received.  He 
was  a  tall,  handsome,  well-preserved  elderly  man  in  1869,  enthu- 
siastic on  one  subject  only :  shooting  with  rifle  and  shotgun. 

Next  or  near  to  the  portal  of  his  grim-looking,  much  closed 
dwelling  was  a  door  with  one  name  on  it  in  a  large  metal  plate : 
"Wingent" :  which  for  years  I  assumed  to  be  a  coarsened  Kentish 
form  of  Vincent.  And  next  door  to  "Wingent"  was  'Trail." 
Mr.  Prall  was  a  solicitor,  the  brother  of  the  Town  Clerk,  and 
parent  of  a  large  family  of  black-eyed,  rosy-cheeked  boys  and 
girls. 

But  the  outstanding  fact  for  me  in  1869  was  that  Charles 


18 


THE  STORY  OF  MY  LIFE 


Dickens  lived — when  at  home — within  a  drive  of  Rochester,  at 
Gad's  Hill.  His  house,  I  confess,  seemed  to  me,  even  in  those 
days  of  worship,  too  "early  nineteenth  century" ;  and  it  was 
placed  too  near  the  main  road  for  dignity.  Visitors  from 
America  and  elsewhere  were  wont  to  have  their  vehicles  drawn 
up  just  outside  the  raised  front  garden,  and  there  sit  and  gloat 
and  nudge  one  another  if  a  daughter  or  a  maid  servant  came  out 
of  the  dwelling  and  picked  a  flower.  At  one  end  of  this  front 
garden  was  a  wooden  chalet  raised  up  among  the  trees,  where 
Dickens  was  reported  to  be  writing  a  new  novel  at  that  moment. 
Great,  indeed,  therefore  was  the  thrill  when  one  day,  toward 
the  close  of  my  long  visit,  strolling  past  the  Cathedral  with  Miss 
L.,  she  pressed  my  arm,  bent  and  said  in  a  low  voice,  "That  is 
Mr.  Dickens,  taking  notes  in  the  Cathedral  porch." 

I  turned  my  eyes  discreetly  and  saw  a  not  very  tall  man  in  a 
double-breasted  cutaway  coat  and  a  tall  chimney  pot  hat,  with  a 
grizzled  beard  look  up  at  us  from  writing  in  a  note  book.  I  am 
bound  to  say  the  look  did  not  strike  me  as  friendly:  he  seemed 
annoyed  at  being  recognized  and  interrupted  in  what  no  doubt 
were  the  first  notes  taken  for  Edwin  Drood.  We  passed  on  hur- 
riedly; but  I  burst  out  excitedly  to  an  assembled  luncheon  party 
on  my  return :  "We've  seen  Charles  Dickens,  and  he  was  making 
notes  about  Rochester  Cathedral !"  "Quite  likely,  my  dear,"  said 
the  impassive  Mrs.  L.  "But  go  and  smooth  your  hair  and  wash 
your  hands  before  you  come  in  to  lunch." 

Mrs.  L.'s  only  interests  in  middle  age  seemed  to  me  to  lie  in 
such  things  as  "Lily  leaves  steeped  in  brandy."  This  confection 
and  numberless  others — remedies,  salves,  stimulants,  purges,  car- 
minatives— filled  countless  jars,  gallipots,  and  glass  vessels  on 
the  shelves  of  the  two  bathrooms  and  of  her  own  ample  bedroom. 
I  never  heard  of  their  being  administered  to  any  one,  and  they 
were  placed  too  high  up  for  easy  access  and  experimental  trial 
on  my  part.  She  was  a  kindly,  taciturn,  generous  old  lady,  who 
after  her  husband's  death  in  1871  seemed  to  me  to  live  on  for 
many  more  years  at  Buxton  and  Bath.  Her  youngest  daughter, 
Sophie,  who  some  years  afterwards  married  my  eldest  brother. 


THE  STORY  OF  MY  LIFE 


19 


was  still  at  a  "finishing  school"  in  1869.  She  had  at  the  age  of 
eighteen  got  so  near  the  end  of  educability  that  she  had  reached 
the  height  "of  painting  flowers"  on  white  velvet  .  .  .  chair- 
backs,  or  the  opulent  covering  of  elegant  sofas.  This  information 
humbled  one  who  could  only  aspire  at  best  to  Double  Elephant 
drawing  paper. 

My  first  Rochester  visit  in  1869  may  have  lasted  from  July  to 
September  only,  but  it  bulks  very  large  in  my  life's  remem- 
brances. It  was  followed  by  many  others,  often  twice  in  the 
year,  till  I  became  knit  up  with  Africa;  and  the  L.'s  married, 
lived  elsewhere,  grew  to  be  invalids,  or  died :  or  surviving  in  the 
next  generation  through  marriage  alliances  with  my  own  and 
other  families,  settled  in  other  parts  of  Kent. 

But  not  only  in  East  Kent  did  my  intense  love  of  country  life 
and  scenery  find  satisfaction.  One  of  my  father's  sisters  had 
married  a  Dr.  Purcell  from  Cork,  who  had  become  head-master 
of  a  government  school  at  Greenwich.  They  were  allotted  a  gov- 
ernment house,  rent  free,  on  Maze  Hill;  but  in  this  same  mem- 
orable year  (1869)  Mr.  Gladstone  had  decided  that  the  school 
had  become  unnecessary.  My  uncle  was  retired  on  a  pension 
equivalent  to  full  pay,  and  selected  as  a  place  to  live  at  the  village 
of  Whitchurch,  four  miles  from  Monmouth,  and  near  the  Here- 
fordshire Wye.  (It  has  since  been  much  built  over  and  uglified; 
but  in  those  days,  the  'seventies  and  early  'eighties,  it  represented 
the  perfection  of  English  country  scenery.)  The  hills  near  at 
hand  were  nine  hundred,  a  thousand,  twelve  hundred  feet  high ; 
and  the  Black  Mountains  of  Brecknock — gloomy  with  forest  and 
rain  clouds — were  within  sight  and  had  an  altitude  of  some  two 
thousand  five  hundred  feet.  The  towns  within  range — Ross, 
Monmouth,  Hereford,  Coleford,  were  full  of  quaint  and  lovely 
bits  of  architecture;  there  were  ruined  abbeys  and  castles  all 
along  the  Wye  Valley ;  Chepstow,  at  the  end  of  a  drive  of  faultless 
beauty,  with  Tintern  Abbey  on  the  way,  was  rich  in  picturesque- 
ness,  with  its  uplifted  castle  and  wide-stretching  views  toward 
the  sea-like  Severn.   Until  1881  most  of  my  holidays  from  school 


20 


THE  STORY  OF  MY  LIFE 


or  college  were  spent  either  in  East  Kent  or  in  Hereford- 
Gloucester-Monmouthshire. 

The  dictum  of  the  family  doctor  in  1868  that  I  was  to  be  kept 
from  school  for  twelve  months  exercised  a  marked  effect  on  my 
liberty  of  action  in  regard  to  education.  Before  this  decision  was 
accepted  by  indulgent  parents,  I  had  gone  far  toward  acquiring 
the  French  language,  so  that  in  the  Year  of  Indulgence — as  it 
seemed  to  me — I  could  read  with  comprehension  simple  books 
in  French,  and  in  fact  passed  much  of  that  twelve  months  reading 
in  libraries  and  studying  painting  at  the  South  Lambeth  School 
of  Art,  or  drawing  animals  at  the  Zoological  Gardens.  In  the 
winter  of  1869-70  we  moved  to  a  large  and  pleasant  house  in  the 
South  Lambeth  Road,  close  to  the  Clapham  Road,  and  here  the 
disused  rooms  for  a  theoretical  coachman  were  transformed  for 
me  into  a  bedroom  adjoining  a  studio  with  top  lights.  Here  I 
had  accommodation  for  home  studies  in  drawing.  Somewhere 
about  this  year — 1870 — I  began  to  make  the  acquaintance  of  the 
British  Museum  and  to  do  so — incongruously  enough — through 
a  daughter  of  Edward  Irving. 

Edward  Irving,  whether  or  not  he  was  love-lorn  through  fail- 
ing to  marry  Mrs.  Carlyle,  must  have  had  two  or  more  children 
by  the  wife  he  did  marry.  He  left  a  daughter  and  at  least  one 
son,  who  became  an  "angel"  of  a  Catholic  Apostolic  Church. 
The  daughter  married  Mr.  Samuel  Rawson  Gardiner,  the  great 
historian.  They  lived  in  London  in  some  square  of  the  W.  C. 
district  at  no  great  distance  from  the  British  Museum.  They 
had  a  family  of  nice,  hearty,  friendly  boys  and  girls,  and  I  liked 
Mrs.  Gardiner  very  much,  though  she  always  reminded  me  on 
superior  lines  of  Mrs.  Jellyby.  Her  husband  I  was  early  led  to 
revere  as  a  great  historian,  but  he  seemed  to  me  when  I  was 
young,  rather  like  a  new  type  of  ogre,  a  spectacled  ogre,  with 
fierce  nose,  large  teeth,  and  a  red  beard.  He  came  to  the  table 
at  lunch  time,  but  retreated  soon  afterwards  to  his  impregnable 
study  from  which  issued  historical  works  of  such  real  importance 
and  interest,  that  even  as  a  schoolboy  one  could  appreciate  them. 


THE  STORY  OF  MY  LIFE 


21 


I  never  remember  Mrs.  Gardiner,  despite  her  ancestry,  worry- 
ing me  very  much  over  religion,  and  her  husband  was  apparently 
what  we  should  now  call  an  agnostic.  Mrs.  Gardiner's  chief 
interest  seemed  to  lie  in  the  British  Museum,  and  it  was  she  who 
first  inducted  me  into  its  collections,  taking  mc  there  again  and 
again  to  visit  antiquities  and  the  old  Natural  History  galleries, 
after  an  ample  though  untidy  lunch,  and  back  again  to  an  excel- 
lent tea  of  a  similarly  diffuse  nature. 

In  this  same  year,  I  went  when  I  was  twelve  to  the  not  far 
distant  Stockwell  Grammar  School  to  submit  to  a  more  stereo- 
typed form  of  education  (as  I  thought),  but  in  reality  to  be 
inducted  very  thoroughly  into  such  things  as  really  mattered. 

Looking  back  on  this  four  and  a  half  years — 1870-1875 — I 
esteem  myself  fortunate  in  having  followed  my  two  elder 
brothers  at  this  school.  It  was  situated  in  the  Stockwell  Park 
Road  on  the  east  side  of  the  Clapham  Road,  and  had  been 
founded,  somewhere  about  1850,  as  a  preparatory  school  to 
King's  College  in  the  Strand.  Just  prior  to  my  going  there  a  new 
head-master,  a  new  staff  of  masters  had  been  appointed,  and  they 
were  certainly  to  be  distinguished  by  modernity  of  views  and 
comparative  youth.  The  head-master  was  the  Rev.  Edgar  San- 
derson who  was  later  on  selected  to  preside  over  a  large  Public 
School  in  Yorkshire,  and  whose  books  on  education  and  geog- 
raphy attained  some  fame.  The  master  dealing  with  the  classics, 
the  French  master,  and  the  artist  who  taught  drawing  I  particu- 
larly remember,  because  their  teaching  seemed  so  unlike  the  style 
generally  then  in  vogue.  Sanderson,  who  directed  the  trend  of 
the  school,  was  particularly  eager  that  we  should  study  Latin, 
not  only  or  merely  as  the  medium  of  an  excessively  boring  litera- 
ture of  the  Golden  Age,  but  as  the  eventual  parent  of  Italian, 
Spanish,  French  and  Portuguese.  Viewed  in  that  aspect  it  be- 
came— to  me,  at  any  rate — a  subject  of  inexhaustible  interest. 
He  inducted  us  into  Gaston  Paris's  French  translation  of  Diez's 
Grammar  of  the  Latin  Tongues,  this  French  version  being  a  little 
fuller  and  clearer  than  the  German  original  of  the  early  'sixties. 


22 


THE  STORY  OF  MY  LIFE 


He  taught  geography  and  geology  from  the  standpoint  of  Lyell 
and  Geikie,  and  British  history  as  J.  R.  Green  was  about  to 
reveal  it.  The  master  dealing  with  the  classics  directed  our  atten- 
tion to  late  Latin  writers  of  the  early  Christian  centuries 
(Boethius),  as  well  as  to  Vergil  and  Plautus.  The  French  mas- 
ter, whom  we  suspected  of  being  a  Communard  that  had  left 
France  for  his  political  opinions  in  1871,  was  at  any  rate  an  orig- 
inal and  entertaining  teacher  of  French,  and  like  the  head-master 
wished  us  to  understand  how  it  came  to  be  derived  from  Latin 
and  Frankish  German.  The  teacher  of  drawing  (a  noteworthy 
aquarellist)  viewed  art  from  a  new  standpoint,  Realism — though 
he  would  be  considered  old-fashioned  now.  He  insisted  on  our 
drawing  direct  from  actuality,  painting  only  what  we  saw,  and 
inventing  nothing.  He  was  a  friend  of  Mr.  Sparkes  of  Lambeth, 
so  that  while  at  Stockwell  I  continued  to  be  in  touch  with  the 
trend  of  teaching  at  that  art  school. 

What  particularly  made  me  happy  at  this  Grammar  School 
was  the  open-mindedness  of  most  of  its  masters,  of  the  head- 
master especially.  For  instance,  he  realized  fully  how  much  there 
was  to  be  learned  in  the  way  of  anatomy  at  the  museum  of  the 
Royal  College  of  Surgeons,  in  biology  at  the  Zoological  Gardens, 
and  made  such  arrangements  of  attendance  at  classes  and  occa- 
sional extra  half-holidays  as  enabled  me  to  work  at  those  places. 
He  sometimes  hired  a  brake,  two  brakes,  filled  them  with  a  class, 
and  drove  us  out  into  Surrey  on  geological  picnics.  He  did  not 
punish  me  because  I  loathed  the  study  of  Euclid  and  deemed  that 
for  me,  with  my  particular  outlook,  brain-racking  algebra  was 
little  likely  to  be  of  use,  while  geometry  on  the  other  hand  was 
decidedly  worth  attention.  One  way  and  another,  my  four  and 
a  half  years  at  this  school  constituted  a  time  of  unbroken  interest 
and  happiness.  I  liked  the  masters  and  the  boys.  I  can  not 
remember  a  quarrel  or  difference  of  opinion  with  either.  But 
apparently  this  modernity  of  education  was  not — in  the  suburbs 
• — a  paying  proposition.  Sanderson  and  the  other  masters  in  due 
time  passed  on  to  greater  establishments  of  a  modernist  trend; 
a  different  class  of  boys — or  the  parents  thereof — required  a 


\ 


Sketch  of  the  author's  mother  as  a  girl  of  nineteen. 


THE  STORY  OF  MY  LIFE 


23 


type  of  education  which  left  modern  languages  in  the  lurch,  the 
ample  site  of  the  school  just  off  the  Clapham  Road,  with  its 
warder's  lodge  and  tall  trees,  became  valuable  and  the  trustees 
sold  it.  The  school  was  swept  away,  I  think,  before  this  century 
began. 

I  left  the  Grammar  School  at  the  beginning  of  1875  when  I 
was  over  sixteen,  and  became  an  evening  student  at  King's 
College,  where  I  devoted  myself  more  especially  to  the  classes 
in  French,  Italian,  Spanish  and  Portuguese.  Much  of  the  day- 
light was  taken  up  with  work  at  the  South  Lambeth  Art  School, 
where  I  was  hoping  to  qualify  for  admission  to  the  Royal  Acad- 
emy Schools  as  a  student  in  painting. 

In  1872  I  had  applied  for  a  student's  ticket  to  work  as  an 
artist  in  the  Zoological  Gardens.  I  do  not  know  whether  such 
facilities  are  given  nowadays,  but  from  the  early  'sixties  onward 
till  the  end  of  the  last  century  students'  tickets  were  very  gener- 
ously granted  by  the  Society  through  the  Secretary,  Dr.  Sclater. 
They  admitted  the  holder  every  day  except  Saturday  and  Sunday. 
(You  could  always  get  in — somehow — on  these  other  days,  but 
were  rightly  prohibited  from  erecting  easels  and  obstructing 
visitors.)  My  ticket  when  it  was  issued  came  to  me  just  after 
my  fourteenth  birthday.  I  made  use  of  it  on  Wednesday  after- 
noons, and  if  some  especially  interesting  or  important  occasion 
arose,  not  in  the  holiday  season,  generally  obtained  permission  to 
absent  myself  from  school. 

Soon  after  I  began  to  frequent  the  Gardens  I  attracted  the 
attention  of  Professor  Alfred  Garrod,  the  young  prosector  of 
the  Zoological  Society.  He  came  and  spoke  to  me  one  afternoon 
when  I  was  drawing  a  lion's  head,  and  invited  me  into  his  pro- 
sectorium. Having  made  me  free  of  this — wonderland,  as  it 
seemed,  withdrawn  from  the  accession  of  the  ordinary  sight- 
seers— he  encouraged  me  and  numerous  other  youths  and  young 
men  to  come  and  study  there,  to  dissect,  to  learn  the  structure 
of  birds,  beasts  and  reptiles. 

In  my  case  I  made  some  small  return  by  drawing  illustrations 
for  his  books  or  papers,  though  I  was  often  paid  for  these  by  his 


24 


THE  STORY  OF  MY  LIFE 


publishers.  He  introduced  me  to  Professor  (Sir  William) 
Flower,  then  Curator  of  the  Museum  at  the  Royal  College  of 
Surgeons,  who  turned  out  to  be  a  very  distant  connection  of  my 
own.  (I  recognized  him  by  his  pronunciation  of  the  vowel  "o." 
My  Flamilton  aunts  and  uncles  all  had  a  peculiar,  pursed-lip 
pronunciation  of  this  vowel.  In  my  mother  it  was  barely  notice- 
able. Professor  Flower,  in  fact,  spoke  and  laughed  exactly  like 
these  relations.  I  knew  that  my  great-grandmother  on  my 
mother's  side — Mrs.  John  Mainwaring — had  been  a  Miss  Flower, 
and  I  ascertained  that  she  had  been  sister  or  cousin  to  Professor 
Flower's  grandfather.) 

However  that  might  be,  the  Flowers  were  exceedingly  kind, 
and  my  studies  at  the  College  of  Surgeons'  Museum  (of  which  I 
became  in  1902  one  of  the  Trustees)  were  facilitated.  This 
Museum,  founded  by  the  great  John  Hunter,  is  one  of  the  won- 
ders of  London,  and  is  generously  open  to  the  public  six  days  of 
the  week.  In  the  time  of  my  youth,  it  was  not  thought  quite — 
er — proper  or  delicate  that  men  and  women  students  should  face 
the  mysteries  of  our  anatomy  and  that  of  the  higher  mammals 
together;  so  on  Fridays  the  Museum  was  more  or  less  reserved 
for  women,  who  only  had  one  day  instead  of  six  in  the  week  to 
study  its  contents.  Males  were  not  forbidden  to  enter  on  the 
Friday,  since  I  remember  coming  in  one  Friday  morning  and 
witnessing  a  curious  accident.  A  large,  buxom,  pleasant- featured 
young  woman  wished  to  study  some  point  in  an  exceptionally 
large  and  swinish-looking,  bottled  infant.  I  did  not  see — from 
an  upper  gallery  where  I  was  drawing  a  chimpanzee's  brain — 
exactly  what  happened,  but  somehow  in  pushing  her  examina- 
tion of  the  enormous  bottle  too  near  or  too  far  it  overbalanced, 
the  immense  stopper  came  out,  the  infant  after  it,  and  the  hys- 
terical, screaming  girl  was  seated  on  the  floor  holding  the 
hundred-years-old  genie  thus  released  from  its  confinement, 
deluged  by  its  preserving  spirit,  and  surrounded  by  the  fragments 
of  the  smashed  vessel. 

I  was  engaged  on  this  occupation  of  drawing  chimpanzees' 
brains  for  some  purpose  of  Professor  Garrod's,  I  think  for  a 


THE  STORY  OF  MY  LIFE 


25 


series  of  articles  on  biology  he  was  doing  for  Cassell's  Natural 
History.  I  may  have  been  between  seventeen  and  eighteen  at 
the  time.  A  short,  stoutish,  pleasant-faced  elderly  man,  with  the 
usual  side-whiskers  of  those  days,  came  once  or  twice  and  looked 
at  me.  Then  he  cleared  his  throat,  and  introduced  himself  as 
"Sir  Erasmus  Wilson." 

"I  have  heard  about  you  from  Professor  Flower,"  he  said, 
"and  understand  you  are  an  art  student.  I  wonder  if  I  may  make 
a  proposal  to  you?  I  am  giving  three  or  four  lectures  on  the 
growth  of  hair  on  the  human  skin.  You  may  or  may  not  know 
that  there  occur  cases — very  painful  cases,  sometimes — of  young 
women  .  .  .  more  frequently  of  young  men  ...  in  which 
the  hair-growth  of  the  body  is  abnormally  developed.  It  is  not 
too  much  to  say  that  with  their  clothes  off  they  look,  all  but  the 
face  and  the  front  side  of  the  neck,  like  the  apes.  I  have  at  pres- 
ent consulting  me  a  young  woman — perhaps  she's  thirty — a  per- 
fectly healthy  and  normal  person  otherwise,  who  is  completely 
covered  with  hair,  save  on  the  throat  and  chest.  I  wanted  some 
one  like  yourself  to  attend  at  my  consulting  room.  Her  face  of 
course  will  be  concealed  from  observation.  ,  .  .  But — I  thought 
— if  you  made  the  necessary  notes — this  is  very  important — as 
to  the  direction  of  the  hair-growth.  .  .  .  It  is  almost  exactly 
that  of  the  anthropoid  apes. — Then  you  might  draw  a  figure  from 
some  bust  or  statue  and  insert  the  hair  from  the  notes  you  have 
taken  of  our  observations?" 

I  attended,  made  the  notes,  drew  the  greater  part  of  the  figure 
from  some  statue  of  Venus — or  a  reputed  Venus — and  inserted 
the  hair-growth  under  Sir  Erasmus's  supervision,  with  particular 
attention  to  its  direction.  It  was  a  glossy  brown,  I  remember. 
At  the  lecture  or  lectures  there  were  further  exhibited  drawings 
of  chimpanzees,  and  lantern-slides  from  photographs  of  the  set 
and  direction  of  their  hair-growth;  and  the  similarity  between 
anthropoid  ape  and  human  was  certainly  remarkable.  In  the  case 
of  Sir  Erasmus's  patient  the  hair  grew  thickly  on  the  neck,  below 
the  head-hair,  and  on  the  back,  and  on  the  upper  and  outer  arms 
was  profuse.    It  continued  down  the  body  almost  to  the  ankles. 


26 


THE  STORY  OF  MY  LIFE 


but  was  altogether  more  abundant  on  the  back.  In  front  it  did 
not  seem  to  begin  till  the  lower  part  of  the  bust,  and  was  thinner 
on  the  inner  side  of  the  arms,  but  luxuriant  on  the  belly  and 
the  thighs,  absent  from  the  hands  and  feet. 

The  surgeon  and  skin  doctor  at  this  period  was  preparing  to 
write  a  treatise  on  the  growth  of  hair  on  the  human  body.  I  do 
not  remember  whether  he  lived  to  publish  his  work.  But  he  left 
me  with  the  impression  that  cases  of  body-hairiness  (to  a  remark- 
able extent,  but  of  course  concealed  by  clothing)  occurred  fre- 
quently among  the  northern,  long-headed  Europeans,  the  long- 
headed Mediterranean  people  of  North  Africa,  and  here  and 
there  in  Portugal,  southwestern  France,  amongst  the  Russian 
peasantry,  and  some  of  the  Balkan  peoples.  A  little  later  in  time 
the  "Hairy  Ainu"  of  northern  Japan  were  made  known  to  us; 
and  although  there  is  a  good  deal  of  variation  amongst  them  I 
have  seen  examples  visiting  an  exhibition  in  London  which  cer- 
tainly showed  (though  more  on  the  underside  or  front  of  the 
body)  a  remarkable  development  of  hair  growth.  This  again 
occurs,  sporadically,  in  West  Burma,  in  southern  India  and 
Ceylon,  in  African  Pygmies,  and  even  among  certain  West 
African  tribes  like  the  Krumen  of  Liberia.  In  the  later  years  of 
my  life,  especially  in  the  Great  War,  I  have  occasionally  assisted 
with  the  wounded  or  killed  in  hospitals,  and  have  come  to  realize 
that  hairy  men  of  our  own  race  exist  far  more  abundantly  than 
the  general  public  imagines. 

In  the  early  days  of  my  drawing  at  the  Zoo,  when  I  was  fifteen 
or  sixteen,  I  used  to  notice  another  draughtsman  with  a  face  and 
manner  of  distinction,  usually  working  without  a  cap  or  hat,  yet 
with  a  bald  occiput  and  a  fringe  of  curly,  dark  hair  round  it. 
There  were  numerous  drawers  of  animals  at  that  time,  some  of 
a  humble  class  and  rather  rough  manners,  unexpected  geniuses 
of  the  "pub"  or  the  National  School.  With  these  I  worked  on 
my  half -holidays  on  terms  that  were  at  any  rate  polite.  They 
were  inclined  to  be  aggressive  and  noisy,  only  out  of  uncertainty 
as  to  their  position.  Most  of  them  proved  to  be  really  decent 
fellows  as  they  grew  older,  and  one  or  two  developed  into 


THE  STORY  OF  MY  LIFE 


27 


geniuses  in  animal  portraiture — it  was  before  the  days  of  per- 
fected and  instantaneous  photography.  But  the  man  who  wore 
no  hat,  had  dreamy  eyes,  indefinably  well-cut  clothes,  who  looked 
at  us  as  though  he  did  not  see  us,  took  my  breath  away  with  the 
boldness  of  his  drawing.  His  lions  and  tigers,  jaguars  and 
leopards  were  superb,  more,  I  should  think,  like  what  earlier 
variants  of  these  creatures  were  in  Man's  primitive  days,  when 
the  lions  of  South  Germany,  the  tigers  of  North  Asia,  the 
leopards  of  North  Africa  were  a  third  again  as  large  as  they 
are  now. 

Garrod  efifected  an  introduction,  and  Mr.  J.  T.  Nettleship  (as 
he  turned  out  to  be)  made  friends  with  me  and  used  to  invite 
me  occasionally  to  see  him  at  his  studio  on  the  verge  of  Camden 
Town.  On  these  walls  were  studies  and  pictures  more  wonderful 
than  any  he  ever  exhibited.  The  reason  was  that  the  more  fin- 
ished among  them  had  either  been  rejected  or  were  manifestly 
rejectable  by  the  Royal  Academy  of  those  days,  still  entirely 
orthodox  in  regard  to  religion,  and  not  seeing  anything  lawful 
or  proper  in  attempts  to  depict  Early  Man  (a  strong  predilection 
of  Nettleship's)  a  hundred  thousand  years  before  Bishop 
Ussher's  date  for  the  opening  of  the  Garden  of  Eden.  But  to 
me  these  bold  paintings  of  a  band  of  Neanderthal  Men  meeting 
a  troop  of  faintly-spotted  lions,  of  a  struggle  between  the  men 
of  Neolithic  civilization  and  the  Cave-dwellers  of  Paleolithic 
culture,  an  attack  on  the  magnificent  Irish  deer  by  low-browed 
P^leolithics  with  their  primitive  weapons  of  the  earliest  ages  of 
chipped  flints,  were  highly  stimulating,  if  a  little  alarming.  There 
were  also  "Scriptural"  subjects  of  a  preceding  stage  in  Nettle- 
ship's  mental  development,  when  the  Bible  still  interested  him. 
There  was  a  wonderful  study  of  a  wrestling  match  between 
Jacob  and  the  Angel,  Jacob  being  a  naked  ungainly  man,  and  the 
Angel  an  Arabian  genie  of  hideous  and  solemn  aspect.  Or  a 
Hebrew  prophet,  drawn  from  some  lean,  coffee-colored  Arab 
picked  up  at  the  docks;  or  an  apostle  painted  from  a  Levantine 
Greek  of  Alexandria  more  truthfully  represented  (I  thought) 
the  beings  of  the  eastern  Mediterranean  world  two  and  three 


28 


THE  STORY  OF  MY  LIFE 


thousand  years  ago  than  the  European  types — Italian,  French, 
Flemish,  Rhinelander,  from  which  Scriptural  personages  were 
drawn  from  the  Dark  Ages  down  to  about  1870. 

Another  personality  who  impressed  me  in  my  'teens  was  Ernest 
Griset,  though  I  doubt  whether  I  ever  spoke  to  him.  But  he 
used  to  come  to  the  Zoological  Gardens  to  draw,  and  some  keeper 
told  me  who  he  was.  His  work,  though  it  tended  towards  the 
weird,  seemed  to  me  strikingly  original  and  in  some  senses 
artistic ;  and  though  the  beast,  bird,  or  reptile  he  portrayed  might 
have  a  narquois  aspect,  it  was  never  without  some  odd  fidelity 
to  the  original.  He  did  in  the  'sixties  and  'seventies,  for  some 
mean,  poorly-paying  publisher  (no  doubt)  some  very  striking 
"restorations"  of  extinct  animals.  I  suspect  he  is  long  since 
dead,  and  he  was  far  too  original  and  unconventional  to  have  any 
record  in  the  Encyclop<sdia  Britannica  or  the  National  Portrait 
Gallery. 


CHAPTER  II 


Between  the  ages  of  sixteen  and  twenty-one  I  seem  to  have 
packed  a  great  variety  of  experiences,  studies,  pursuits  and 
acquaintances  into  my  life.  My  home  was  a  particularly  happy 
one,  only  touched  with  an  occasional  anxiety  as  to  my  mother's 
health.  She  was  still  extraordinarily  young-looking  and  charm- 
ing, though  by  the  end  of  1874,  then  scarcely  more  than  thirty- 
seven,  she  had  had  eleven  children ;  and  at  the  birth  of  the  elev- 
enth had  nearly  died.  Still  in  1875  she  recovered,  and  for  two 
previous  years  had  been  greatly  helped  and  cheered  (for  my 
father  in  those  days  had  often  to  go  abroad)  by  the  presence  in 
our  house  of  a  niece,  the  daughter  of  my  father's  younger 
brother,  the  Reverend  S.  H.  Johnston. 

This  younger  brother  by  a  curious  inversion  had  married  my 
mother's  elder  sister,  Jane  Hamilton,  and  had  had  by  her  three 
daughters.  He  had  also  lost  faith  in  the  Catholic  Apostolic 
Church,  and  rejoined  the  Church  of  England.  Yet  as  a  young 
married  man  he  had  been  seized  with  an  irrational  enthusiasm 
for  the  Southern  cause  in  the  United  States,  had  gone  over  there 
to  fight  (receiving  an  officer's  commission  from  Jefferson  Davis), 
been  wounded — twice — and  then  returned  to  England.  After 
that  he  took  a  considerable  interest  in  religion,  which  led  to  his 
studying  theology  for  the  purpose  of  becoming  a  clergyman.  He 
had  somehow  attracted  the  attention  of  Archbishop  Tate  who, 
I  believe,  eventually  ordained  him.  After  some  years  of  curacies 
and  vicariates  in  England  he  was  nominated  to  a  Chaplaincy  in 
southern  India,  where  he  spent  about  half  his  long  life,  with 
occasional  visits  to  England.  Two  of  his  daughters  went  out  to 
my  aunt  and  uncle  in  British  Columbia,  and  married  there.  One 
of  them,  after  becoming  a  widow,  returned  to  Europe  and  estab- 
lished her  residence  in  Bruges,  enamored  of  its  beauty.  Her 

29 


28 


THE  STORY  OF  MY  LIFE 


thousand  years  ago  than  the  European  types — Italian,  French, 
Flemish,  Rhinelander,  from  which  Scriptural  personages  were 
drawn  from  the  Dark  Ages  down  to  about  1870. 

Another  personality  who  impressed  me  in  my  'teens  was  Ernest 
Griset,  though  I  doubt  whether  I  ever  spoke  to  him.  But  he 
used  to  come  to  the  Zoological  Gardens  to  draw,  and  some  keeper 
told  me  who  he  was.  His  work,  though  it  tended  towards  the 
weird,  seemed  to  me  strikingly  original  and  in  some  senses 
artistic ;  and  though  the  beast,  bird,  or  reptile  he  portrayed  might 
have  a  narquois  aspect,  it  was  never  without  some  odd  fidelity 
to  the  original.  He  did  in  the  'sixties  and  'seventies,  for  some 
mean,  poorly-paying  publisher  (no  doubt)  some  very  striking 
"restorations"  of  extinct  animals.  I  suspect  he  is  long  since 
dead,  and  he  was  far  too  original  and  unconventional  to  have  any 
record  in  the  Encyclopedia  Britannica  or  the  National  Portrait 
Gallery. 


CHAPTER  U 


Between  the  ages  of  sixteen  and  twenty-one  I  seem  to  have 
packed  a  great  variety  of  experiences,  studies,  pursuits  and 
acquaintances  into  my  life.  My  home  was  a  particularly  happy 
one,  only  touched  with  an  occasional  anxiety  as  to  my  mother's 
health.  She  was  still  extraordinarily  young-looking  and  charm- 
ing, though  by  the  end  of  1874,  then  scarcely  more  than  thirty- 
seven,  she  had  had  eleven  children ;  and  at  the  birth  of  the  elev- 
enth had  nearly  died.  Still  in  1875  she  recovered,  and  for  two 
previous  years  had  been  greatly  helped  and  cheered  (for  my 
father  in  those  days  had  often  to  go  abroad)  by  the  presence  in 
our  house  of  a  niece,  the  daughter  of  my  father's  younger 
brother,  the  Reverend  S.  H.  Johnston. 

This  younger  brother  by  a  curious  inversion  had  married  my 
mother's  elder  sister,  Jane  Hamilton,  and  had  had  by  her  three 
daughters.  He  had  also  lost  faith  in  the  Catholic  Apostolic 
Church,  and  rejoined  the  Church  of  England.  Yet  as  a  young 
married  man  he  had  been  seized  with  an  irrational  enthusiasm 
for  the  Southern  cause  in  the  United  States,  had  gone  over  there 
to  fight  (receiving  an  officer's  commission  from  Jefferson  Davis), 
been  wounded — twice — and  then  returned  to  England.  After 
that  he  took  a  considerable  interest  in  religion,  which  led  to  his 
studying  theology  for  the  purpose  of  becoming  a  clergyman.  He 
had  somehow  attracted  the  attention  of  Archbishop  Tate  who, 
I  believe,  eventually  ordained  him.  After  some  years  of  curacies 
and  vicariates  in  England  he  was  nominated  to  a  Chaplaincy  in 
southern  India,  where  he  spent  about  half  his  long  life,  with 
occasional  visits  to  England.  Two  of  his  daughters  went  out  to 
my  aunt  and  uncle  in  British  Columbia,  and  married  there.  One 
of  them,  after  becoming  a  widow,  returned  to  Europe  and  estab- 
lished her  residence  in  Bruges,  enamored  of  its  beauty.  Her 

29 


30 


THE  STORY  OF  MY  LIFE 


experiences  in  Belgium  during  the  war  (which  took  her  by  sur- 
prise and  held  her  there)  were  very  much  those  I  attributed  to 
Vivien  Rossiter,  "Mrs.  Warren's  Daughter."  But  the  eldest 
daughter,  left  behind  in  England  by  her  parents,  came  to  live 
with  us  to  help  my  mother,  and  grew  extremely  attached  to  her. 
Through  us  she  was  introduced  to  Rochester  and  the  L.'s;  and 
she  married  my  friend  Lewis  L.  in  1877. 

By  the  spring  of  1876  I  had  passed  into  the  Royal  Academy  as 
a  student  of  painting;  and  by  this  time  I  had  been  nearly  two 
years  at  the  evening  classes  at  King's  College,  working  in  the 
main  at  modern  languages — French,  Italian,  Spanish  and  Portu- 
guese. And,  as  secondary  interests,  might  be  mentioned  my  stud- 
ies in  comparative  anatomy  in  the  Prosector's  Rooms  at  the 
Zoological  Gardens,  and  at  the  Museum  of  the  Royal  College  of 
Surgeons.  My  desire  to  choose  painting  as  a  profession  was 
already  unconsciously  modified  by  doubts  as  to  whether  I  should 
ever  develop  into  a  great  painter;  to  be  a  second-rate  artist  did 
not  attract  me.  I  achieved  facile  triumphs  in  1876-79  as  a 
Royal  Academy  student  because  I  was  a  good  draughtsman  and 
had  some  skill  as  a  painter  from  actuality — studies  from  the  life, 
from  still  life — as  a  colorist,  as  an  appreciator  of  the  exact  values 
of  chiaroscuro  in  a  scene.  But  as  a  composer  of  pictures,  as 
anything  more  than  a  predecessor  of  Photography,  I  began  to 
doubt  whether  I  should  make  a  name.  I  was  intensely  anxious 
to  travel,  having  already  seen  a  good  deal  of  England.  I  wanted 
to  test  the  languages  I  had  learned,  see  if  I  could  really  be  com- 
prehended by  the  people  that  spoke  them. 

Far  from  discouraging  me,  my  father  with  little  pressure 
promised  that  as  soon  as  I  had  passed  my  eighteenth  birthday  he 
would  agree  to  my  spending  two  or  three  months  abroad.  I  do 
not  remember  his  making  any  suggestion  as  to  the  route,  and  the 
fact  that  I  had  thought  of  Spain  and  the  Balearic  Islands  as 
my  main  objective  was  due  to  a  book  from  Mudie's  Library, 
and  met  with  his  entire  approval.  He  had  several  times  been  to 
Spain,  and  his  Company  had  Spanish  agents  at  certain  Mediter- 
ranean ports  who  occasionally  visited  us  in  London.    So,  soon 


THE  STORY  OF  MY  LIFE 


31 


after  my  eighteenth  birthday  in  1876,  he  supplied  me  with  the 
necessary  funds,  and  I  started  for  Paris  by  the  Newhaven- 
Dieppe  route. 

In  Paris  I  drove  to  the  Grand  Hotel,  undismayed  then,  as 
I  should  not  be  now;  and  was  given  a  very  nice  room,  and 
treated  in  a  motherly  way  by  a  kind  chambermaid.  The  Tuileries 
were  still  a  blackened  ruin,  inexpressibly  sad  in  contrast  with  the 
Rue  de  Rivoli  and  the  gardens  beyond.  A  few  days  afterwards 
I  left  for  Marseilles  and  had  a  most  comfortable  journey  thither 
— no  rush  or  turbulent  crowd  at  the  station  in  those  days.  I 
shared  a  compartment  of  coupe-lits  with  one  other  traveler,  a 
charming  type  of  Frenchman,  who  insisted  on  my  partaking  of 
his  prepared  dinner  off  cold  roast  chicken  and  a  salad  taken  out 
of  a  tin.  A  night  at  Marseilles,  and  then  embarkment  on  a 
steamer  proceeding  to  Barcelona.  At  Barcelona  two  or  three 
days  in  a  stately  hotel,  and  an  acquaintance  with  a  kind  German 
Consul,  concerned  that  with  so  youthful  an  appearance  I  should 
be  contemplating  a  lonely  journey  all  over  Spain.  However,  I 
was  not  dismayed  at  his  warnings.  The  Castilian-Spanish  I  had 
learned  at  King's  College  was  not  the  current  language  of  Catalan 
Barcelona,  and  proved — in  those  days — even  less  used  in  Ma- 
jorca, where  the  dialect  was  a  form  of  Catalan  approaching  very 
near  to  the  medieval  Provengal,  the  Provencal  of  the  Trouba- 
dours, a  beautiful  form  of  speech  in  which  the  Latin  feminines 
ended,  as  they  should  do,  in  -a,  and  there  was  none  of  the  mysti- 
fying -0  and  -ou  for  feminine  which  has  utterly  disfigured  the 
modern  Provengal  of  France.  I  had  learned  something  of  Cata- 
lan through  my  acquaintance  with  Diez's  Grammar,  so  in  this 
respect  I  did  not  feel  so  utterly  astray,  for  at  a  pinch  I  could  ask 
for  what  I  required  in  some  amalgam  of  Romance  languages. 

But  although  things  at  Palma,  the  capital  of  Majorca,  were 
most  alluring — I  remember,  even,  the  weeds  with  lovely  flowers 
in  the  old  walls,  and  some  of  this  masonry  must  have  had  its 
stones  brought  down  from  Carthaginian  times — I  was  for  some 
forgotten  reason  impelled  to  proceed  to  Soller,  thinking  I  should 
find  it  cooler  and  with  more  subjects  to  paint.   In  these  respects 


32 


THE  STORY  OF  MY  LIFE 


I  had  not  been  misinformed:  an  artist  there,  then,  was  just 
glutted  with  subjects;  but  foreign  visitors  were  not  expected  in 
the  middle  of  summer,  and  the  Inn  at  Soller,  though  scrupulously 
clean,  had  very  little  food  for  guests.  My  hostess  seemed  to  have 
nought  to  ofifer  me  save  doubtful  eggs  cooked  with  too  constant 
a  flavor  of  garlic;  or  "calderas."  Her  "caldera"  was  an  exces- 
sively thin  broth,  a  kind  of  hot  water  flavored  at  most  with  the 
rind  of  bacon  and  a  little  cheese,  onion,  salt  and  pepper,  with  a 
round  of  roll  floating  in  the  hot  water.  I  was  so  hungry  that  I 
ate  the  roll  greedily;  but  the  liquid  of  the  "caldera"  did  not  seem 
worth  swallowing.  There  were  seedy  oranges,  a  few  crisp 
peaches,  and  early  apples ;  and  occasionally  I  got  a  cup  of  watery 
chocolate  or  a  small  glass  of  goat's  milk.  This  poor  diet,  and  the 
silence,  the  withdrawal  from  crowds  of  gay,  lively,  talkative 
people  so  acutely  brought  on  an  attack  of  home-sickness  that 
after  I  had  been  six  or  seven  days  at  Soller  I  had  almost  resolved 
to  leave  Majorca  and  return  to  Barcelona-Marseilles-Paris-and- 
London,  and  confess  myself  mistaken  in  my  craze  for  foreign 
travel.  Instead,  however,  I  managed  to  find  an  excellent  riding 
donkey,  and  a  lively,  intelligent  Mallorquin  youth  as  guide.  I 
rode  one  night  up  to  the  summit  of  the  highest  mountain.  El  Puig 
Mayor,  and  painted  the  sunrise  from  its  altitude  of  five  thousand 
one  hundred  and  fifty  feet ;  and  in  the  evening  the  sunset  steep- 
ing its  flanks  in  rose-color,  with  gray-blue  shadows.  I  passed 
other  days  in  a  delicious  dream,  riding,  walking  over  the  island 
with  no  luggage  but  my  painting  things,  sleeping  at  old  but  flea- 
less  inns,  eating  oranges  and  peaches,  occasional  roast  chickens 
and  bits  of  mutton,  excellent  long  rolls  of  white  bread,  and 
attended  by  the  handsome,  quick-witted  youth  who  was  the  don- 
key's groom.  Most  reluctantly  I  called  again  at  Soller,  picked  up 
my  luggage,  and  re-embarked  on  a  steamer  bound  for  Valencia. 

In  Valencia  I  took  to  smoking,  because  in  those  days  every 
male  Spaniard  you  met  who  was  inclined  to  be  civil  proffered  a 
cigar,  and  I  did  not  possess  sufiicient  fluency  in  Castilian  to 
decline  it  without  giving  offense.  So  for  two  or  three  months  I 
smoked  as  I  have  never  done  since,  for  tobacco  exercises  no  effect 


THE  STORY  OF  MY  LIFE 


33 


whatever  on  niy  nerves,  neither  good  nor  ill.  I  traveled  to 
Madrid  and  saw  its  picture  galleries ;  returned  to  the  south  again 
and  remained  for  a  few  contemplative  days  in  Cordoba,  held 
captive  by  its  Mosque-Cathedral  and  its  Moorish  charm.  Naked- 
legged,  lousy,  flea-bitten,  Murillo-like  children  squatted  round 
me  while  I  sketched;  but  for  once  the  charm  of  architecture 
made  me  indifferent  to  the  presence  of  fleas,  bugs  and  lice. 

From  Cordoba  by  devious  way  to  Granada.  Days  and  days  in 
the  Alhambra  drawing;  in  the  gardens  of  the  Generalife  paint- 
ing; other  days  donkey-riding  in  the  mountains.  The  Hotel 
Washington  Irving,  not  entirely  flealess,  but  otherwise  comfort- 
able and  friendly,  was  pleasantly  Anglicized.  Then — omitting 
half-forgotten  experiences — Seville,  where  I  stayed  longest. 

At  the  Hotel  de  Paris — whither  they  came  sometimes  to  dine 
and  hear  the  music — I  met  two  young  Spaniards.  I  think  their 
name  was  Pastor,  with  a  cynical,  worldly-wise,  but  very  kindly 
uncle.  The  two  youths  spoke  both  English  and  French,  and 
lived  in  a  beautiful  house  in  Seville  of  Moorish  design,  with  the 
customary  patio  in  the  middle,  luxuriantly  bowered  in  bananas 
and  palms,  and  with  a  large,  central,  stone  basin  and  an  upreared 
fountain.  This  feature  so  pleased  me  that  I  made  a  painting  of 
it.  I  forget  what  had  become  of  their  parents:  perhaps  they 
were  only  traveling,  and  had  left  the  boys'  uncle  in  charge; 
perhaps  they  were  dead,  and  he  was  their  guardian.  More 
charming  people  it  would  have  been  difficult  to  meet  in  those 
days.  They  taught  me  more  Spanish  than  I  learned  from  books, 
and  more  about  Spain  and  the  excited  Spanish  politics  than  news- 
papers could  tell  me.  With  them  I  went  to  the  open-air  summer 
theaters,  and  heard  for  the  first  time  Offenbach's  Grand  Duches 
of  Gerolstein  in  a  Spanish  translation. 

I  quitted  Seville  at  last,  and  made  my  way  to  Malaga.  Here  I 
took  a  passage  to  London  on  a  British  steamer,  not  exceptional 
for  those  times,  but — I  should  think — quite  unattainable  in  these 
hard  days.  For  twelve  pounds,  first  class,  one  could  obtain  a 
leisurely  return  passage  to  London  from  southern  Spain,  and 
usually  a  whole  cabin  to  one's  self.   There  was  only  room  for  a 


34 


THE  STORY  OF  MY  LIFE 


few  first  class  passengers  on  board  this  "Fruit-boat,"  which  was 
carrying  to  the  London  market  the  early  autumn  fruit  of  Spain : 
bananas,  grapes,  apples,  pears,  nuts  and  whatever  else  could  be 
retarded  from  the  summer  or  ripened  before  the  autumn  gales. 
The  ten  or  twelve  passengers  were  English  people  of  pleasant 
manners  and  a  London  habitat.  One  couple  with  whom  I  made 
a  special  acquaintance  came  from  "The  Boltons,"  and  to  "The 
Boltons"  I  afterwards  went  not  infrequently  to  dine  till  Africa 
separated  us.  Our  journey  home  from  Malaga  must  have  occu- 
pied a  fortnight,  and  we  would  willingly  have  prolonged  it.  We 
called  at  various  Spanish  ports  on  either  side  of  the  Straits  of 
Gibraltar,  had  three  days  at  Lisbon  and  two  days  at  Vigo  before 
we  landed  at  Plymouth  and  traveled  up  to  London. 

Much  strenuous  study  at  the  Royal  Academy  Schools  marked 
the  year  of  1877.  Lord  Leighton — in  those  days  not  yet  Presi- 
dent and  only  "Mr."  Leighton — was  one  of  the  "visitors"  at  our 
evening  "Life"  class,  when  we  drew  strenuously  from  the  nude 
figure.  Ordinarily  to  these  Life  classes  we  came  in  rough  clothes 
or  changed  into  washable  linen  jackets  to  work  unconcernedly 
at  drawing  with  charcoal  or  chalk,  and  employing  crumb  of  bread 
to  eflface  wrong  lines  or  overstressed  shadow.  But  I  had  heard 
that  Leighton  was  very  regardful  of  a  student's  appearance ;  that 
unless  he  was  spotlessly  clean  and  nicely  dressed  he  took  little 
interest  in  his  work.  So  I  came  to  the  evening  Life  class  in  black 
clothes — some  anticipation  of  the  dinner  jacket  dress  of  the  next 
twenty  years.  And  being  thus  imprisoned  in  a  faultless  shirt- 
front  and  a  black  silk  tie  I  could  only  draw  in  charcoal  very 
mincingly,  gingerly,  and  be  careful  not  to  smudge  myself.  My 
drawing  therefore  was  a  poor  one,  and  I  longed  for  the  "visit" 
to  be  over,  in  order  to  make  my  outer  self  efficient  and  ugly,  and 
be  reckless  about  dirty  hands  or  a  smudged  collar.  Nearer  and 
nearer  came  the  handsome  man,  delivering  himself  of  grave  yet 
courteous  criticisms  or  of  genial  praise.  I  had  soon  observed  that 
I  was  the  only  "nicely"  dressed  person  present,  though  my  ren- 
dering of  the  model  was  for  the  moment  inept.  At  last  Leighton 
bent  over  my  seated  form,  looked  at  the  drawing,  and  scanned 


THE  STORY  OF  MY  LIFE 


35 


carefully  my  personal  appearance.    I  had  to  pretend  to  be  ab- 
sorbed in  the  artistic  task  before  me,  unaware  of  the  presence  of 
this  demi-god.    A  minute  later  came  his  question-verdict:  "Is 
this  a  joke?" 
"W-w-hat,  sir?" 

"Do  you  generally  come  to  these  classes  in  evening  dress?" 

"N-n-o,  sir  .   .   .  I— I  " 

"Well  ?" 

"I — I  heard  you — were  coming,  sir  " 

I  believe  the  great  man  said  something  biting  in  sarcasm,  but 
in  the  general  laugh  from  the  thirty  or  forty  suitably  clad  and 
charcoal-smudged  fellow-students  it  was  fortunately  drowned. 
But  other  R.  A.  "visitors"  were  easier  to  accord  with;  even  jolly, 
sympathetic,  and  suggestive,  like  Millais,  or  Alma  Tadema,  H. 
W.  B.  Davis,  W.  Q.  Orchardson,  P.  H.  Calderon.  .  .  . 

In  the  spring  of  1876,  we  had  moved  from  the  house  I  had  so 
much  liked  in  the  South  Lambeth  Road — so  conveniently  near 
to  the  Thames  and  its  river  steamers,  to  Vauxhall  Bridge  and 
Westminster — to  a  home  of  greater  seclusion,  v^hich  stood  by 
itself  in  a  garden  of  about  one  acre  on  Champion  Hill,  at  the  top 
of  Grove  Lane.  It  had  been  decided  to  transfer  the  Catholic 
Apostolic  Church  from  Trinity  Square,  Southwark,  to  a  new 
and  much  more  spacious  and  ornate  building  at  Camberwell 
Green,  which  had  been  designed  by  the  architect  John  Belcher 
R.  A.,  a  member  of  this  body.  My  father  thought  therefore 
that  he  and  his  family  should  now  reside  within  walking  distance 
of  the  new  church  which  he  hoped  we  should  frequently  attend. 
It  was  only  this  lien  which  restrained  him  from  moving  out  into 
the  country  altogether.  There  were,  it  is  true,  numerous  "C. 
and  A."  churches  in  provincial  towns,  but  none — except  for 
Albury — out  in  the  absolute  country;  and  they  were  most  of  them 
ugly  buildings  hidden  away  with  a  certain  shamefacedness.  The 
liking  for  a  large  garden,  greenhouses,  aviaries  and  quiet  at  night 
made  him  avoid  a  residence  in  the  heart  of  London,  in  some 
Bloomsbury  square.    His  frequent  episodes  of  travel — South 


36 


THE  STORY  OF  MY  LIFE 


Africa,  Russia,  Spain,  France,  Italy,  Constantinople,  Sweden, 
Germany,  Austria  or  Asia  Minor  slaked  his  passion  for  fine 
scenery;  he  was  accustomed  every  summer  to  take  a  furnished 
house  in  the  country  or  at  the  seaside;  therefore  it  seemed  to 
him  just  to  fit  the  case  that  his  home  for  the  conducting-  of  busi- 
ness in  London  should  be  within  sight  of  the  open  country — as 
Champion  Hill  was  in  those  days — yet  only  twenty  minutes' 
railway  journey  from  the  West  End  or  the  heart  of  the  City. 

My  mother  died  in  November,  1877,  in  giving  birth  to  my 
youngest  brother.    She  was  only  forty-one  years  of  age. 

For  several  months  afterwards  I  was  stupefied  with  grief ;  then 
I  became  once  more  interested  in  painting  and  the  prospects  of 
foreign  travel.  I  went  to  France  in  the  half-intention  of  follow- 
ing friends  among  the  Royal  Academy  students  who  thought 
Paris  gave  one  a  more  modern  education  in  painting.  But 
although  I  spoke  French  fluently  and  pointedly  at  that  time,  I 
disliked  the  "atmosphere,"  noise,  and  practical  jokes  of  the  Paris 
schools  of  painting,  and  the  discipline  as  to  style  then  surrounding 
Paris  teaching.  Unconsciously  I  was  already  beginning  to  rebel 
against  the  formalities  which  still  encompassed  the  training  of 
an  artist,  and  was  too  much  interested  in  other  careers  and  their 
subjects  to  be  wholly  devoted  to  that  of  painting.  There  was, 
for  example,  the  lure  of  languages,  especially  the  most  interesting 
group  in  the  world,  the  Romance  tongues :  the  remembrance  of 
my  experiences  in  the  summer  of  1876;  the  passing  into  Cata- 
lonia ;  Majorca,  and  its  peculiar  Provengal  dialect ;  the  Castilian 
of  central  Spain,  and  the  different  dialect  of  Andalucia;  Portu- 
guese and  the  Gallego  spoken  at  Vigo  

So  I  migrated  with  rather  vague  intentions  to  Avignon.  I 
found  the  Hotel  de  I'Europe  at  that  place  a  really  "European" 
hotel,  with  a  history  possibly  stretching  back  to  the  days  when 
Avignon  was  papal.  Here  I  could— in  those  happy  days — be 
sumptuously  lodged  and  boarded,  and  even  have  studio  accom- 
modation in  a  disused  stable,  for  five  francs  a  day  if  I  stayed 


THE  STORY  OF  MY  LIFE 


37 


more  than  a  week.  I  stayed  two  to  three  months,  and  painted 
several  successful  pictures  (amongst  them  the  study  of  an  old 
Avignon  woman,  Angele  Chandolas)  which  were  exhibited  at 
the  Royal  Academy  and  the  Dudley  Gallery  in  1879.  From  this 
headquarters  I  traveled  into  many  parts  of  Provence — Tarascon, 
Nimes,  Vaucluse,  Barbentane,  up  the  Rhone,  and  down  the 
Rhone,  and  finally  into  Savoy,  and  home  by  way  of  Switzerland. 

I  paused  for  some  reason  at  Lausanne  (the  Hotel  Gibbon — 
does  it  still  exist?)  before  penetrating  farther  into  Switzerland; 
and  was  taken  ill  here — possibly  nothing  more  than  a  surfeit  of 
grapes.  Staying  in  the  same  hotel  was  a  comely  woman,  with 
several  children  with  whom  she  spoke  in  "French"  French.  Her 
name — I  learned — was  "Meuricofifre,"  and  she  was  the  wife  of 
a  great  Swiss  banker  at  Naples.  It  has  been  my  way  in  life  to 
think  when  slightly  indisposed  that  I  am  very  ill;  and  when  I 
really  am  ill  to  believe  myself  to  be  dying.  I  imagine  therefore 
that  when  incapacitated  for  a  day  or  so  at  the  Hotel  Gibbon  with 
the  results  of  eating  too  much  fruit,  I  must  have  looked  very 
melancholy.  In  any  case  I  had  the  appearance  not  of  being 
twenty  years  of  age  but  more  of  eighteen.  To  Madame  Meuri- 
coffre's  occasional  glances  I  seemed  a  sick,  lonely  boy.  Her 
motherly  heart  was  moved  to  question  me,  and  she  did  so  in 
Scots  English.  My  inward  troubles  vanished  as  I  talked  to  her. 
She  came  from  a  Dumfries  family,  not  without  Johnston  rela- 
tionships, and  had  married  this  excellent  Monsieur  Meuricofifre, 
the  Swiss  banker,  at  Naples.  In  the  summers  of  those  days  she 
generally  moved  to  Switzerland  with  her  children  if  she  did  not 
visit  Scotland.  Towards  me  she  acted  like  a  fairy  godmother; 
inducted  me  into  the  never-to-be-exhausted  wonders  and  beauties 
of  Switzerland.  I  parted  from  her  there  ten  days  later  on, 
obliged  to  return  to  England  to  be  present  at  my  eldest  brother's 
wedding  with  Sophie  L.  But  before  separating  she  gave  me  her 
Naples  address  on  a  visiting  card  and  told  me  if  ever  I  came  there 
to  let  her  know. 

Eighteen  years  were  to  go  by  before  I  could  give  effect  to  this 
invitation.   I  may  have  called  frequently  at  Naples  in  the  interval 


38 


THE  STORY  OF  MY  LIFE 


of  time,  as  it  was  on  the  usual  route  to  or  from  East  Africa  and 
India.  But  at  last,  in  the  early  summer  of  1896,  I  had  my  oppor- 
tunity. I  had  landed  at  Naples  in  returning  from  Nyasaland  and 
was  not  pressed  for  time.  I  inquired  at  my  hotel  after  Madame 
Meuricoffre — "a  Scozzese."  She  was  well-known  and  lived  in 
a  beautiful  palazzo  on  Capo  di  Monte.  I  wrote  recalling  the 
invitation  of  Lausanne,  and  had  a  speedy  reply  inviting  me  to  her 
house  to  join  a  family  party  that  evening.  A  carriage  was  hired 
to  take  me  there- — a  drive  seemingly  up  and  down  through  tortu- 
ous narrow  streets,  and  out  into  the  country.  The  palazzo  stood 
at  a  considerable  elevation  and  apparently  a  hired  vehicle  could 
not  drive  up  to  its  entrance.  I  was  put  down  therefore  at  the 
foot  of  a  dream  staircase  of  innumerable  stone  steps,  and  my 
driver  told  me,  as  far  as  I  could  understand  his  dialect,  that  here, 
at  the  bottom  of  those  steps,  he  would  be  in  waiting  at  ten  o'clock 
to  convey  me  back  to  the  hotel. 

I  was,  of  course,  in  evening  dress  and  wore  thin  evening 
"pumps."  I  ascended  in  the  dusk  the  three  hundred  and  forty 
steps,  or  some  such  number,  but  there  was  the  villa  all  right.  I 
was  ushered  in  to  a  typical  family  gathering.  In  the  middle  of  it 
was  my  old  friend  of  eighteen  years  before,  now  an  exceedingly 
stately  lady  of  sixty.  The  large  family  was  all  grown  up  and 
several  of  them  had  married.  The  husband  was  a  distinguished 
man  of  seventy  or  thereabouts.  It  was  soon  clear  to  me — alas ! — 
that  Madame  Meuricoffre  had  only  the  dimmest  remembrance 
of  those  Lausanne  days ;  and  not  wishing  to  keep  me  waiting,  had 
decided  to  receive  me  at  some  more-than-ordinary  family  gather- 
ing to  celebrate  some  more-than-ordinary  family  event.  .  .  . 
I  stayed  till  ten  o'clock — I  was  very  polite  and  every  one  else 
was  the  same  .  .  .  but  Madame  Meuricoffre  could  not  remember 
me,  or  only  very  dimly.  ...  At  ten  I  left,  vinswervingly ; 
tripped  down  the  three  hundred  and  something  steps  .  .  .  but 
.  .  .  no  carriage!  I  walked  here  and  walked  there,  and  in- 
quired in  very  halting  Italian  of  a  lonely  guardian  of  the  peace. 
At  last  there  seemed  nothing  to  do  but  turn  my  steps  towards 
Naples,  anyhow,  any  way,  and  hope  to  pick  up  a  carozza  of  sorts. 


Above:    Maurice  de  Roumefort.  Above:  The  Comte  de  Sancy  in  1880. 

Beloiu:   Dean  Butcher  of  Cairo.  Beloiv:     Ernest    Avscough  Floyer 

(1884). 


THE  STORY  OF  MY  LIFE 


39 


I  walked  seemingly  for  miles.  I  had  no  umbrella  and  it  was 
raining,  raining  at  last  in  torrents.  My  evening  shoes,  under- 
mined by  Tropical  Africa,  dissolved  and  left  me.  I  saw  no 
vehicle  of  any  description,  and  at  last  had  to  force — rather  than 
throw — myself  on  the  mercy  of  a  priest  who  eventually,  at  one 
in  the  morning,  led  me  to  my  hotel,  very  sorefooted. 

Madame  Meuricofifre  if  she  is  still  living,  must  be  now  about 
eighty-six.  I  could  wish  she  were  alive,  for  I  still  feel  grateful 
for  her  induction  into  the  most  beautiful  country  in  the  world: 
Switzerland. 

In  the  spring  of  this  year  (1878)  I  remember  being  down  at 
Whitchurch  at  my  uncle's  (Dr.  Purcell),  and  talking  with  his 
near  neighbor.  Major  Weaver,  about  my  bent  as  an  artist,  how 
I  desired  only  to  paint  what  I  saw,  to  be  a  severe  realist.  .  .  . 
He  evidently  did  not  quite  follow  my  meaning  and  intentions. 
Presently  he  said:  "What  you  ought  to  do  is  to  study  Lord 
Dudley's  collection.  Who  knows,  indeed,  but  what  his  lordship 
might  give  you  a  commission  to  paint  some  subject;  and  that 
might  lead  to  your  making  a  fortune  ?" 

Anxious  to  be  put  on  such  a  path,  and  filliped  by  curiosity — 
for  the  Lord  Dudley  of  that  day  was  a  much  talked-of  personage, 
owing  to  his  beautiful  wife  and  his  Rafifaelesque  way  of  growing 
his  hair  in  long  curly  locks  about  his  ears — I  agreed.  .  .  . 
"But  who  would  give  me  an  introduction  to  Lord  Dudley?" 

"I  will,"  he  replied.   "I  know  him  well.   He  asks  me  down  to 

shoot  sometimes.    I  "  and  here  he  related  the  circumstances 

which  had  led  to  the  acquaintance — something  to  do  with  the 
Yeomanry  of  Worcestershire. 

I  gratefully  accepted  the  letter  of  introduction,  and  as  soon  as 
I  was  back  in  London  forwarded  it  with  an  accompanying  request 
that  I  might  call  and  see  his  galleries.  It  was  soon  answered  in  a 
kindly  note  mentioning  a  morning  and  an  hour  for  the  call.  My 
fellow-students  at  the  R.  A.  heard  the  news  with  interest,  and  also 
with  scofifing  and  skepticism,  and  sketched  out  the  interview  and 
its  results  in  greatly  varying  phantasmagoria,  richly  illustrated 


40 


THE  STORY  OF  MY  LIFE 


in  charcoal  on  paper  or  white  chalk  on  a  disused  blackboard. 
However,  I  had  received  a  graciously-worded  reply — to  every 
one's  astonishment — and  presented  myself  one  May  morning  at 
eleven  o'clock  at  twenty — or  was  it  twenty-two  ? — Park  Lane. 

My  knock  and  ring  were  immediately  answered.  The  door 
was  opened  by  a  hall  porter  or  a  footman  in  livery,  whose  solemn 
face  lit  up  at  the  sight  of  me  with  my  portfolio  of  drawings. 
"He's  come!"  he  called  backwards  to  a  sort  of  groom  of  the 
chambers,  who  looked  important  enough  to  be  the  real  master  of 
the  house;  and  the  groom  of  the  chambers  hailed  a  stout  lady's 
maid  on  a  first  floor  gallery,  and  she  came  running  down  with  a 
parcel  in  her  hand. 

"Here  is  the  corset,"  she  said  panting,  "and  there  is  a  letter 
from  her  ladyship  inside.    You'll  see  at  once  it's  far  too  tight 

 "    "But  "  I  said.  .  .  .  "But  you  are  Dickins  and 

Jones?"  she  cried  in  accents  of  despair.  "No,  I  am  not,"  I  said. 
"I'm  very  sorry  to  disappoint  you,  but  I've  called  to  see  Lord 
Dudley.  .  .  .  Here  is  his  letter.  .  ,  ,." 

All  three  domestics  groaned  their  disappointment.  The  groom 
of  the  chambers  then  led  me  to  an  ante-room,  and  said  he  would 
announce  me  to  his  Jordship.  As  I  waited  I  heard  the  sound  of 
a  piano  accompaniment  above,  and  an  excessively  operatic  so- 
prano singing  a  duet  with  some  one  who  had  a  rather  thin  tenor 
voice.  Presently  the  duet  finished.  There  were  murmurs  of 
voices,  followed  by  the  sound  of  skirts  swishing  down-stairs,  and 
the  closing  of  the  hall  door.  Then  the  groom  of  the  chambers 
reappeared  and  showed  me  up  a  magnificent  staircase  to  a  great 
gallery  of  pictures.  Through  another  door  there  walked  to  meet 
me  a  tall  man — Lord  Dudley — very  aristocratic  in  bearing  and 
appearance,  with  his  hair  falling  in  a  curly  fringe  on  either  side 
of  his  face,  much  as  one  sees  it  growing  in  the  portraits  of 
Rafifael.  Somehow,  though  it  was  already  derided  in  the  heavy 
sarcasm  of  the  day,  it  struck  me  at  the  time  that  it  did  not  look 
out  of  keeping  with  the  features  or  the  frock-coat;  but  there  shot 
through  my  mind  as  I  advanced  to  meet  him  one  of  the  stories 
told  about  him  in  those  days :  how  as  a  young  man  in  the  'forties 


THE  STORY  OF  MY  LIFE 


41 


or  early  'fifties  of  that  century  he  and  a  companion  had  been 
caught  by  the  Turks  at  Constantinople  trying  to  smuggle  them- 
selves into  the  harem  of  a  great  personage;  and  how  it  had  been 
decided  to  punish  the  companion  with  a  terrible  mutilation,  but 
Lord  Dudley  (as  far  less  guilty)  merely  with  the  cropping  of  his 
ears:  and  I  strove  to  distinguish  the  ear-conches  through  the 
pendent  locks,  but  could  not  do  so  before  greeting  him,  nor  was  I 
able  to  refute  the  probably  quite  preposterous  story  by  any  after 
glimpse  of  his  ears. 

It  must  be  remembered  that  in  those  days  tales  of  this  descrip- 
tion, ninety  out  of  a  hundred  being  wholly  untrue,  were  told  of 
every  prominent  man  or  woman.  Most  of  these  notables  went 
to  their  graves  quite  unaware  that  they  owed  their  progeniture 
to  a  blacksmith  or  to  the  Prince  Consort,  that  they  had  forged 
their  father's  signature  to  an  unfair  will,  had  proposed  marriage 
to  Miss  Burdett-Coutts,  or  had  attended  the  Prince  of  Wales's 
wedding-breakfast  (to  win  a  bet)  disguised  as  a  footman  or  a 
cook.  So  it  is  even  more  probable  that  behind  Lord  Dudley's 
love-locks  lay  two  normal,  unmutilated  ears. 

His  conversation  was  of  great  interest  as  he  passed  his  pictures 
in  review;  paused  before  a  Murillo  with  the  story  of  a  genial 
transaction  with  Pope  Pius  ix.  in  Rome  (recently  dead,  at  the 
time  of  the  telling)  ;  or  discussed  his  examples  of  Velasquez  or  of 
French  landscape  painters  such  as  Delacroix  of  the  'forties,  who 
began  to  paint  Nature  literally  and  with  all  the  poetry  of  actuality 
in  the  first  half  of  the  nineteenth  century. 

He  paused  to  look  at  my  sketches  and  studies,  but  they  clearly 
aroused  nothing  beyond  a  polite  show  of  interest,  and  he  imag- 
ined the  chief  object  in  my  calling  to  be  a  desire  to  study  the 
"masterpieces"  in  his  collection.  So  before  we  parted  he  rang 
for  the  "groom  of  the  chambers"  and  told  him  I  was  to  be  admit- 
ted on  certain  days  of  the  week  between  certain  hours  and 
allowed  to  paint,  "and  not  be  interfered  with."  And  although  I 
had  neither  time  nor  inclination  (in  reality)  to  make  these  stud- 
ies— copying  pictures  has  never  attracted  me  in  the  least — I 
enjoyed  on  occasions  coming  to  the  gallery  and  perhaps  bringing 


42 


THE  STORY  OF  MY  LIFE 


with  me  a  fellow-student  from  the  Academy  schools  who  had 
more  reverence  for  old  masters  than  I  had.  The  historical  inter- 
est of  this  collection — I  remember — was  considerable. 

I  don't  think  I  ever  saw  Lord  Dudley  after  1881.  I  believe  he 
died  in  1885  aged  about  sixty-eight  years.  I  think  I  only  saw 
him  twice  to  converse  with  at  any  length;  but  then  I  remember 
how  intensely  interesting  he  was,  the  things  he  told  me  about  the 
France  of  the  Second  Empire,  about  Spain  and  Italy,  where  I  too 
had  traveled,  and  about  Rome  before  the  Popes  had  ceased  to  be 
Sovereigns. 

I  reached  home  from  France  in  the  autumn  of  1878  just  in 
time  to  attend  my  eldest  brother's  wedding  at  Rochester,  and  to 
say  good  bye  to  my  father  who  was  starting  on  one  of  his  long 
Insurance  journeys  to  Sweden. 

A  month  afterwards  in  the  late  autumn  of  that  year  we  were 
telegraphing  to  him  to  return  at  once  as  my  brother  George  was 
desperately  ill.  George  had  come  back  unwell  from  architectural 
business  in  Norfolk,  in  the  course  of  which  he  had  stayed  at  some 
typhoid-infected  inn  and  drunk  of  its  poisonous  water.  Most  of 
my  family  were  away ;  I  was  the  only  grown-up  member  at  home 
for  a  while ;  the  homeopathic  doctor  who  usually  attended  us  was 
on  a  holiday ;  his  inept  young  assistant  would  not  recognize  the 
fever  as  typhoid,  and  gave  a  diametrically  wrong  treatment.  In 
my  distress  I  appealed  to  my  friend  Garrod  at  the  Zoo.  But 
Garrod,  I  had  discovered  on  my  return,  himself  was  smitten  with 
the  disease  which  killed  him  the  next  year.  Yet  he  bestirred 
himself,  and  induced  his  very  kind  father.  Sir  Alfred  (one  of 
Queen  Victoria's  doctors)  to  come  to  Champion  Hill  and  see 
my  brother.  Sir  Alfred  examined  him  and  stayed  some  hours, 
but  left  with  a  verdict  that  the  case  was  hopeless.  My  father 
arrived  in  hot  haste  from  some  remote  part  of  Sweden,  and 
only  came  in  time  to  see  George  die.  He  awoke  from  his  delirium 
stupor,  recognized  his  father,  looked  with  a  new  gladness  round 
the  candle-lit  circle  of  brothers  and  sisters,  looked  for  a  few  min- 
utes himself  again;  then  his  head  fell  to  one  side,  the  light  went 
out  of  his  eyes,  and  he  was  dead. 


THE  STORY  OF  MY  LIFE 


43 


He  had  died  exactly  a  year  after  my  mother,  and  a  month  or 
two  before  the  projected  date  of  his  own  marriage,  although 
only  in  his  twenty-fourth  year.  He  had  already  established  his 
position  as  an  architect :  but  it  is  no  use  delaying  the  reader  over 
this  episode  or  trying  to  enlist  his  sympathies.  There  are  millions 
of  similar  deaths  occurring  every  year,  showing — as  at  any  rate 
it  showed  me  then — that  in  this  incredibly  vast  universe  the  over- 
ruling "intelligent"  power — if  there  be  one — has  no  conception 
of  what  agonies  of  grief  we  poor  human  ants  on  this  tiny  planet 
can  sufYer  from  the  cessation  of  life  in  those  we  love.  The  re- 
searches of  Astronomy  can  discover  no  Pity  anywhere  in  the 
ruthless  processes  of  Nature. 

My  brother's  death  embittered  and  disheartened  me,  and  it 
was  followed  in  the  next  year — 1879 — by  the  death  of  Alfred 
Garrod,  the  prosector  of  the  Zoological  Gardens.  I  had  known 
Garrod  since  I  was  fourteen;  and  when  I  left  the  trammels  of 
school  he  had  done  much  to  direct  my  very  irregular  education, 
without  approving  of  its  wilful  irregularity.  He  often  urged 
me  to  go  to  Cambridge,  and  put  in  three  years  at  that  University. 
But  my  enthusiasm  for  drawing  and  painting,  an  increasing  inter- 
est in  travel,  and  dislike  of  the  Classics  and  Mathematics,  which 
in  those  days  were  so  largely  concerned  with  the  preliminary 
examination  for  entry  into  the  Universities,  deterred  me.  Alfred 
Garrod  was  in  many  ways  the  most  remarkable,  the  most  charm- 
ing and  lovable  human  being  I  have  met  in  the  course  of  my  life. 
He  was  the  antithesis  of  a  prig.  He  enjoyed  so  many  things 
.  .  ,  Italian  opera — he  had  a  subscription  stall  at  Covent  Gar- 
den and  used  to  lend  it  to  me  when  he  could  not  go — picture 
galleries,  even  ministerial  receptions.  I  portrayed  him  as  nearly 
as  I  could  as  "Professor  A.  H.  Lacreevy"  in  my  first  novel. 
The  Gay-Dombeys.  The  letter  dated  "June,  1878,"  beginning  on 
page  forty-one  of  that  book,  is  a  not-much-altered  version  of  a 
letter  he  wrote  me  at  that  time,  just  after  his  first  warning  of 
phthisis.  The  description  given  of  his  first  attendance  at  a  great 
ministerial  party,  and  his  glimpse  of  the  then  Princess  of  Wales 
is  almost  precisely  as  he  related  it. 


44 


THE  STORY  OF  MY  LIFE 


He  was  only  thirty-three  at  the  time  of  his  death,  and  in  all 
respects  where  I  was  in  any  way  competent  to  form  an  opinion, 
in  advance  of  his  age.  He  said  the  sort  of  things  that  genial  men 
of  science  say  now.  He  had  views  about  the  mosquito  which 
were  the  beginning  of  the  discoveries  of  Sir  Ronald  Ross,  and 
which  set  me  reflecting  and  theorizing  on  the  Congo  long  before 
Ross's  suspicions  and  theories  were  adumbrated.  Garrod's  views 
on  the  classification  of  birds  seemed  very  upsetting  in  the  'seven- 
ties, but  they  have  become  the  orthodox  system  of  to-day.  His 
influence  over  other  people  was  very  great :  in  W.  A.  Forbes,  his 
successor  at  the  Zoo  and  in  bird  classification,  he  had  almost  cre- 
ated a  successor.  (Forbes,  like  Garrod,  was  a  brilliant  thinker, 
foredoomed  to  die  at  an  early  age.  He  worked  and  studied  under 
Garrod  in  his  youth,  distinguished  himself  at  Cambridge,  suc- 
ceeded Garrod  on  his  death  as  Prosector,  formed  a  deep  friend- 
ship with  myself,  sought  to  join  me  on  the  Congo  in  1882,  was 
diverted  however  to  the  Niger,  and  died  at  Shonga  near  Rabba 
on  January  14,  1883.) 

Garrod  suddenly  broke  a  blood  vessel  in  June,  1878.  Up  till 
that  time  he  imagined  he  would  live  to  seventy  or  eighty,  and 
would  carry  on  the  work  of  Darwin.  But  by  the  middle  of  1878 
he  abruptly  realized  that  he  was  a  doomed  man,  destined,  in  all 
probability,  to  die  of  phthisis  in  a  year  or  so.  The  last  fifteen 
months  of  his  life  were  a  struggle  to  finish  and  publish — in  some 
cases  prematurely — his  researches  in  anatomy.  He  remained 
conscious  and  in  full  mental  activity  almost  up  to  the  hour  of  his 
death,  though  he  lost  the  use  of  his  voice  a  few  weeks  before  it 
occurred  on  October  17,  1879. 

In  the  autumn  of  that  year  it  is  necessary  to  say  that  being 
rather  imaginative  and  very  depressed  about  Garrod,  I  had  be- 
come nervous  about  my  own  health.  The  trouble  began  in  the 
summer  of  1877 — a  tendency  to  feel  faint — though  I  had  never 
yet  fainted — and  a  susceptibility  to  contract  severe  bronchial 
attacks,  a  trouble  that  still  pursues  me.  My  cough  interested  the 
doctors  more  than  my  alleged  faintness,  though  it  was  the  last- 
mentioned  symptom  which  most  upset  me ;  for  the  attacks  would 


THE  STORY  OF  MY  LIFE 


45 


come  on  at  a  theater,  an  evening  party,  in  church,  or  at  the  King's 
College  evening  classes,  so  that  at  last  I  dreaded  going  away 
from  home.  How  much  was  fancy  or  exaggeration  I  can  not  say. 
The  doctors,  though  sympathetic,  could  find  nothing  wrong. 
Perhaps  it  was  indigestion.  The  weakness  either  lessened  ma- 
terially or  completely  disappeared  if  I  traveled  abroad.  So  to 
shake  off  the  tendency  towards  invalidism  I  determined  to  make 
a  long  journey  and  arranged,  with  my  father's  approval,  to  go 
to  North  Africa  for  the  winter  of  1879-80.  We  decided  on 
Tunis — then  a  Turkish  Protectorate — as  the  center  of  this  en- 
deavor ;  partly  because  the  new  British  Agent  and  Consul  General 
was  an  old  acquaintance  of  my  father  at  Smyrna,  whence  he  had 
been  promoted  to  Tunis  on  the  departure  of  Sir  Richard  Wood.^ 
My  journeys  in  Spain  had  filled  me  with  a  desire  to  study 
Saracenic  architecture.  As  soon  as  I  could  get  admission  to  the 
British  Museum  Library,  after  my  twenty-first  birthday,  I  pro- 
ceeded to  read  up  the  subject,  and  realized  then  from  the  French 
researches  in  the  decade  of  the  'sixties,  imder  the  patronage  of 
Napoleon  iii.,  that  the  basis  of  this  architectural  style,  the  "horse- 
shoe arch,"  was  not  an  invention  of  Islam,  but  originated  in  the 
Christian  or  Byzantine  architecture  of  southern  Syria  at  least  a 
hundred  years  before  the  irruption  of  Muhammad.  This  design 
possibly  had  a  dual  origin.  Arches  a  cintre  outrepasse  certainly 
could  still  be  seen  in  the  ruins  of  southern  Syria,  which  dated 

^This  remarkable  man,  Sir  Richard  Wood,  must  have  lived  in  full  bodily 
activity  an  exceedingly  long  time.  When  he  left  the  Tunis  Agency  at  the 
end  of  1878,  it  was  on  account  of  "age" — and  he  was  said  to  be  81,  and  the 
year  of  his  birth  was  guessed  at  1798!  In  1878  there  were  no  arrangements 
in  force  for  the  pensioning  of  Consuls,  so  that  for  sheer  anxiety  as  to 
their  subsistence  Consular  officers  would  remain  at  work  after  they  were 
eighty.  In  the  'sixties  there  were  British  consuls  at  important  places  in 
France  of  80  and  81  years  old. 

Sir  Richard,  however,  after  the  Berlin  Conference  was  over  in  1878 
(when  Lord  Salisbury  was  averred  to  have  "given"  France  Tunis  in  compen- 
saton  for  our  acquirement  of  Cyprus),  expressed  a  wish  to  retire,  and 
as  the  authorities  could  not  force  him  to  remain  at  work  he  was  permitted 
to  withdraw,  and  as  there  were  no  arrangements  in  force  for  pensioning 
consular  servants  he  retired  at  the  age  of  72  (as  it  afterwards  transpired 
— for  he  was  born  in  1806),  and  then  lived  twenty-two  years,  drawing  full 
pay  of  over  £2,000  a  year.  He  paid  us  a  visit  at  Marsa  in  1899,  then,  at 
the  age  of  93  on  his  way  to  the  Holy  Land,  and  died  in  1900,  aged  94. 


46 


THE  STORY  OF  MY  LIFE 


from  pre-Islamic  times — 500  to  600  a.c.  ;  and  in  Mekka  itself 
and  elsewhere  in  Arabia,  before  and  during  Muhammad's  life, 
a  mysterious  phallic  symbol  had  arisen,  the  hollow  phallus  of 
the  Mihrab.  (This  emblem  had  been  transported  to  the  island  of 
Jerba  in  southern  Tunis  and  the  adjoining  mainland  within  a 
hundred  years  of  Muhammad's  death.  There — as  I  saw  them  in 
1897 — these  Muhammadan  shrines  were  hollow  cells  for  prayer 
or  for  the  offering  of  provisions  to  the  spirits  of  the  dead,  and 
were  surmounted  by  a  huge  phallus.  And  this  same  emblem 
crowned  most  of  the  mosque  minarets.  Very  likely  the  whole 
feature  in  Syrian  architecture  had  arisen  farther  back  still  under 
Phoenician  influence.  But  it  had  crept  into  architecture  before 
and  apart  from  Muhammad's  religion.^) 

Curiously  enough,  it  was  in  Tunis — almost — that  true  Sara- 
cenic Art  and  Architecture  first  showed  themselves  with  any  dis- 
tinctness; in  Egypt  next;  and  then  in  Spain.  The  buildings 
erected  in  the  early  days  of  "Saracenic,"  Islamic  domination  in 
Palestine  and  Syria  were  more  Byzantine  in  style.  One  explana- 
tion is  that  the  primal  impetuosity  of  the  Muhammadan  move- 
ment seems  to  have  leaped  the  thousand  miles  that  separate 
Egypt  from  Tunis,  with  little  occupancy  of  the  Tripolitaine 
(greatly  ravaged  as  this  had  been  by  obscure  but  terrible  revolts 
of  the  Jews  against  the  Roman  or  Byzantine  Empire).  The 
Muhammadan  Arabs  traversing  North  Africa  first  concentrated 
at  Kairwan,  the  sacred  city  founded  by  them  in  the  seventh 
century,  and  until  about  1100  a.c.  the  capital  of  Tunisia.  At 
Kairwan  and  elsewhere  in  South  Tunis,  the  "Mahrab"  or 
"Mihrab,"  the  very  center  of  the  Mosque  and  sacred  praying 
place  first  showed  itself.  It  was — or  is  still,  if,  since  my  depar- 
ture, the  French  have  not  destroyed  the  ancient  buildings — simply 
a  halved  phallus,  surmounted  by  the  image  of  one  that  was  entire, 
and  which  gradually  grew  into  the  summit  of  the  mosque,  on  the 
one  hand,  and  the  Mahrab  or  most  sacred  core  of  the  mosque  on 

'  I  contributed  an  illustrated  article  on  this  subject  to  the  Geographical 
Journal  (organ  of  the  R.  Geo.  Soc.)  for  1898. 


THE  STORY  OF  MY  LIFE 


47 


the  other.  But  for  the  discovery  of  horseshoe  arches  and  other 
"Saracenic"  features  in  the  ruined  buildings  of  Syria  dating  from 
pre-Islamic  centuries,  one  might  almost  have  thought  that  the 
horseshoe  arch  was  born  in  Tunisia  from  a  lingering  Cartha- 
ginian influence  which  in  the  south  of  that  country  had  survived 
the  Roman  and  Byzantine  periods. 

In  any  case  Tunis  seemed  a  very  suitable  country  in  which  to 
study  the  Moorish  art  that  rose  to  such  heights  of  beauty  in 
Spain.  Tunis  was  warm  in  winter ;  and  cheap  in  its  average  cost 
of  living.   So  to  Tunis  I  went,  early  in  December,  1879. 


CHAPTER  III 

The  journey  to  this  part  of  North  Africa  was  probably  no 
lengthier  then,  by  rail  across  France  and  steamer  from  Marseilles, 
than  it  is  to-day,  since  the  War  spoiled  all  continental  travel. 
Nothing  particularly  occupied  my  attention  till  I  had  recovered 
from  preliminary  sea-sickness  and  winter  cold  and  was  pacing 
the  steamer  deck  under  the  more  genial  airs  of  the  mid-Mediter- 
ranean. Then  I  became  aware  that  among  my  fellow  passengers 
there  were  two  Frenchmen  of  interest.  One  was  the  Comte  de 
Sancy — the  French  representative  of  a  committee  of  three,  Brit- 
ish, Italian  and  French,  who  controlled  and  managed  the  Tunis- 
ian public  debt;  for  Tunis,  since  1869,  was  virtually  bankrupt 
and  its  finances  were  internationally  controlled.  And  the  other 
was  the  Vicomte  Maurice  de  Roumefort,  a  young  attache  in 
the  French  diplomatic  service,  who  was  going  to  Tunis  to  work 
under  Mons.  Roustan,  the  French  Minister  and  Consul  General. 
Roumefort  was  about  a  year  older  than  I ;  tall,  handsome  and  of 
engaging  manners,  with  an  attractive  English  pointer  dog, 
"Tom" ;  de  Sancy  was  a  man  of  about  fifty-one — rather  corpu- 
lent, and  rather  "ordinary"  in  appearance,  with  a  scrubby,  short, 
and  badly-cut  beard  and  whiskers,  making  him  look  either  as 
though  he  had  not  shaved  for  a  fortnight  or  had  cut  back  his 
face  garniture  with  excessive  ruthlessness.  How  I  got  to  know 
them  I  do  not  remember;  perhaps  it  was  "Tom"  who  brought 
us  together;  but  all  at  once  we  were  talking.  .  .  .  Roumefort 
had  just  finished  his  service  in  the  army,  was  going  to  take  up 
diplomacy,  to  be  an  attache  under  Roustan  .  .  .  the  Comte  de 
Sancy  was  a  personage  of  the  Second  Empire — had  succeeded  to 
a  very  old  title  in  some  mysterious  way — largely  through  the 
influence  of  Louis  Napoleon  in  1849.  He  had  thenceforth,  espe- 
cially from  1852,  been  one  of  the  followers  of  Napoleon  and  the 

48 


THE  STORY  OF  MY  LIFE 


49 


Second  Empire,  had  made  a  rich  marriage  and  inherited  a  con- 
siderable fortune,  had  amicably  separated  from  his  childless  wife 
before  squandering  more  than  half  her  dowry,  and  at  length  had 
been  rescued  from  bankruptcy  by  attracting  (about  1867)  the 
attention  of  the  Foreign  Minister  of  Tunis,  Khaireddin  Pasha, 
who  had  brought  him  to  Tunis  to  breed  race  horses.  Later  on, 
de  Sancy  had  been  appointed  the  French  representative  of  the 
Financial  control  imposed  on  the  bankrupt  Beylik  of  Tunis  in 
1869. 

So :  we  reached  Tunis,  or  in  those  days  Goletta,  on  the  edge  of 
the  narrow  spit  which  lay  between  the  Lake  of  Tunis  and  the 
sea.  Goletta  was  near  the  site  of  Carthage,  near  also  to  the 
Marsa,  an  ancient  port  (as  its  name  indicates)  three  or  four  miles 
to  the  west  of  Carthage.  Thence,  from  Goletta — La  Goulette  of 
to-day — to  the  town  of  Tunis  (about  twelve  miles)  by  a  cranky 
little  English  railway.  Then  an  hotel,  which  though  comfortable 
and  French  in  its  good  diet,  swarmed  with  fleas.  .   .  . 

The  Comte  de  Sancy,  we  found,  lived  inexpensively  in  a  sump- 
tuous summer-house  or  "pavilion"  consisting  of  a  sitting-room, 
a  bedroom,  a  lavatory,  and  a  well-furnished  kitchen  at  the  bottom 
of  a  long  garden  belonging  to  a  new  French  house  on  the  Marina. 

This  "Marina"  was  the  new  boulevard  outside  the  gates  on  the 
road  leading  to  the  Port  of  Tunis  and  the  lake  shore.  We 
vaguely  knew  that  his  tenure  of  this  "pavilion"  depended  on 
some  old  lady  who  lived  in  the  big  mansion  through  which  we 
passed  to  reach  the  garden  and  the  palatial  summer-house.  I 
never  remember  seeing  her  all  the  eight  months  I  spent  in  Tunis. 
In  Paris,  Sancy — I  came  to  know  in  1881 — was  "tres  convenable- 
ment  loge"  in  a  handsome  "appartement"  in  a  good  quarter  of  the 
town ;  but  in  Tunis  I  suspect  that  his  own  dwelling  was  the  rather 
ramshackle  house  out  in  the  country  about  twelve  miles  from  the 
capital  in  the  middle  of  the  Concession  for  breeding  horses. 

De  Sancy  apparently  was  twenty-one  in  1849  when  Louis  Na- 
poleon came  to  his  rescue  and  secured  for  him  the  Sancy  estates 
or  money.  In  1879,  therefore,  he  can  not  have  been  more  than 
fifty  or  fifty-one.  He  had  certainly  by  that  time  become  entirely 
respectable. 


50 


THE  STORY  OF  MY  LIFE 


The  desire  to  be  otherwise  had,  according  to  his  own  descrip- 
tion of  himself,  quitted  him  some  years  before,  "ott  il  s'etait  en- 
tierement  range."  According  to  his  stories  he  had  been  the  lover 
of  most  of  the  remarkable  European  ladies  of  Tunisian  history 
between  1867  and  1875 ;  certainly  of  two  of  them.  I  rather 
fancy  these  two  very  remarkable  women — an  American  and  an 
Italian — are  now  dead.  If  not,  and  they  should  chance  to  read 
these  lines — I  have  known  them  both — let  them  take  "love"  as 
meaning  no  more  than  friendship,  attraction  and  assistance.  One 
of  them  spent  her  after-life  prominent  in  London  Society,  a 
friend  of  King  Edward's  and  a  mother  of  handsome,  well- 
brought-up  children.  The  other  was  the  wife  of  a  Tunisian 
Christian  Minister,  and  worked  strenuously  to  bring  about  the 

French  Protectorate.     This  last  personage,  Madame  E  

M  ,  was  in  1879-80  a  very  handsome  woman,  the  mother  of 

good-looking  children.  Long,  long  afterwards  I  came  to  know 
her  again  when  I  was  Consul  General  in  Tunis.  .  .  . 

In  appearance  de  Sancy  was  not  remarkable :  a  man  of  middle 
height,  rather  corpulent.  You  would  not  have  been  astonished 
if  you  had  been  told  he  was  English,  especially  when  he  was 
well  dressed  in  a  somewhat  English  style.  He  knew  very  little 
of  the  English  language,  yet  a  great  deal  about  England,  an 
immense  deal  about  politics.  His  conversation  was  such  that 
with  any  intelligence  you  could  never  weary  of  it.  On  the  subject 
of  the  Second  Empire  he  was  "intarissable,"  he  had  moved  a 
good  deal  in  diplomacy,  his  stories  were  always  interesting,  and 
usually  witty.  He  was  in  addition  one  of  the  kindest,  most  good- 
natured  men  I  have  ever  met.  Though  perpetually  bankrupt,  so 
to  speak  (I  think  the  term  was  meant  in  a  relative  sense),  either 
his  diplomatic  salary  in  Tunis,  an  allowance  in  respect  to  his  ad- 
ministered estate,  or  a  combination  between  the  two  must  have 
furnished  him  enough  to  live  on.  But  he  was  always  eager  to 
know  "how  I  stood,"  and  although  I  assured  him  that  I  had  a 
sufficiency  of  means  from  the  pictures  I  had  sold,  that  I  had  a 
commission  to  write  occasional  articles  for  the  Globe  which  were 
promptly  paid  for,  and  further  that  my  father  was  always  there 


THE  STORY  OF  MY  LIFE 


51 


to  supply  me  with  means  if  other  sources  failed,  he  frequently- 
proffered  assistance  towards  the  cost  of  expeditions  into  the 
interior.  Disliking  to  become  indebted  to  any  one  and  not  really 
requiring  assistance  I  used  to  decline.  It  was  only  at  the  end  of 
my  stay  that  I  accepted  twenty  pounds  from  him,  in  case,  on  my 
journey  home,  I  felt  (which  I  did  not)  impelled  to  make  a  stay 
in  Paris.  Such  a  project  would  not  have  been  easy  considering 
I  had  saddled  myself  with  the  transport  across  France  of  a 
gazelle,  a  number  of  birds  large  and  small,  and  other  pets  I  had 
accumulated  during  my  stay  in  Tunis.  So  on  my  return  there 
remained  to  be  executed  the  retransference  of  Sancy's  twenty 
pounds.  This  he  would  not  receive  in  money  but  directed  it 
should  be  spent  in  the  transmission  to  him  in  Paris  of  game- 
birds — pheasants  and  grouse — which  I  used  to  send  off  from 
Cannon  Street  station.  This  process  went  on  till  1882  (when  I 
went  away  to  West  Africa)  and  became  a  means  of  keeping  in 
touch  with  Sancy  till  1885.  After  my  return  from  Nigeria  in 
1888,  there  were  no  answers  to  my  letters  and  I  heard  he  had 
died  somewhere  about  then. 

Before  we  had  been  a  week  in  Tunis  Roumefort  and  T  had 
accepted  Sancy's  invitation  to  "faire  popote  ensemble."  Living 
at  the  only  decent  hotel  (then)  in  Tunis  was  not  dear;  but  it 
was  worse  than  dear;  it  was  noisy  and  cramped  in  space.  I  who 
wanted  to  paint  above  all,  to  have  quiet  and  space  for  my  models, 
after  a  few  days'  ranging  over  the  town,  established  myself  with 
Madame  Elisa  in  an  Arab  street — Sidi  Morjani  (  ?) — which  crept 
away  from  the  Europeanized  semi-circle  inside  the  great  shore- 
ward gate  of  the  Moorish  town.  (All  this  region  had  been  swept 
away  seventeen  years  afterwards,  when  I  returned  to  Tunis  as 
Consul  General.)  Roumefort  had  taken  a  lodging  in  a  house 
kept  by  some  Italians.  Madame  Elisa's  domain  seemed  to  him 
too  Moorish  and  unwholesome. 

As  a  matter  of  fact  it  was  less  fllea-smitten  and  even  cleaner 
than  the  European  house  of  his  selection.  Indeed,  nowhere 
could  it  be  called  dirty.  It  was  a  Moorish  house  with  suites  of 
apartments  on  the  first  story  built  round  an  inner  square  like  a 


52 


THE  STORY  OF  MY  LIFE 


Spanish  patio.  The  neighbors'  buildings  on  either  side,  I  admit, 
suggested  squalor  and  emitted  distressing  smells,  and  the  outer 
aspect  of  the  narrow,  cobbled  street  was  gloomy,  dirty  and  de- 
pressing. But  the  inside  of  the  dwelling  was  more  cheerful.  I 
had  a  box-room  or  vestibule,  a  sitting-room,  large  enough  for  a 
studio,  and  a  fairly  comfortable  bedroom.  Beyond  the  bedroom 
was  a  little  empty  apartment  which  I  used  as  a  bathroom.  Here 
light  and  air  were  admitted  by  a  hole  in  the  wall,  and  beyond  this 
upward-turning  hole  one  could  see  nothing,  nothing  but  the  sky. 
It  seemed  to  me  to  look  out  on  immensity,  so  that  for  several 
weeks  I  continued  to  use  it  as  a  waste-paper  basket  from  which  I 
flung  rubbish  to  the  winds.  This  proceeding  however  was  stopped 
when  I  found  that  immediately  below  was  the  open-air  yard  or 
garden  of  a  respectable  Jewish  family,  who  were  frequently  dis- 
tressed during  their  meals  to  receive — as  it  were  from  nowhere — 
old  newspapers,  empty  boxes  of  cigarettes  or  bonbons,  discarded 
mail  matter,  or  other  rubbish. 

The  street  Sidi  Morjani  seemed  to  be  a  narrow,  tortuous  thor- 
oughfare to  the  bazaars  of  Tunis,  and  the  very  remarkable 
Mosque  of  the  Olive  Tree,  portions  of  which — it  is  said — were 
erected  as  early  as  the  end  of  the  seventh  century.  The  narrow, 
stone-paved  lane  of  the  Elisa  dwelling  broadened  southwards  as 
it  neared  the  mosque,  and  there  were  Jewish  shops  on  either  side. 
Then  came  some  mass  of  dark  building,  and  from  the  broad 
tunnel  under  this  you  had  your  first  view  of  the  Mosque  of 
Zeituna  (the  "Olive  Tree").  This  consisted  of  a  flight  of  three- 
sided  stone  steps,  leading  up  to  a  long  roofed  arcade,  and  opposite 
the  steps,  at  the  right  end  of  the  arcade  was  a  mighty  horseshoe 
door  leading  into  the  mosque.  On  the  ground  level,  to  the  left 
of  the  flight  of  shallow  steps,  was  a  very  picturesque  horseshoe 
doorway  and  a  fagade  of  black-and-white  marbles.  Against  this 
closed  doorway  often  stood  a  gaily  caparisoned  mule  or  horse, 
and  a  brightly-costumed  Arab  groom  in  a  brilliant  turban,  a 
sleeveless  jacket,  and  Turkish  trousers. 

The  Olive  Tree  Mosque  probably  remains  much  as  I  saw  it 
forty-two  years  ago,  for  it  is  the  Moslem  "Cathedral"  of  Tunis, 


Leaving  the  Mosque. 
Painted  by  the  author  in  Tunis  in  1880. 


THE  STORY  OF  MY  LIFE 


53 


and  has  attached  to  it  a  world-famous  library.  Its  Cufic  and 
Arabic  mss.  are  said  to  date  back  to  the  eighth  and  ninth  cen- 
turies. The  remainder  of  the  great  building  is,  or  was,  screened 
from  inspection  by  the  bazaars  on  the  right  and  other  buildings 
on  the  left.  The  aspect  of  the  high  gallery,  tiled  roof,  black-and- 
white  marble  outer  wall,  the  steps  swarming  wiih  beautifully  cos- 
tumed Moors,  the  caparisoned  steeds  waiting  below  the  gallery 
for  their  riders  filled  my  eyes  the  second  or  third  day  after  my 
arrival  as  the  subject  of  which  I  was  in  search :  "The  Doorway 
of  the  Mosque."  Would  Tunisian  fanaticism  allow  me  to  sit  in 
the  roadway  and  paint  this? 

Tunisian  fanaticism  would  not.  At  least,  felt  obliged  to  scowl 
and  threaten,  to  fling  an  occasional  stone  or  brandish  a  stick  and 
insert  itself  between  me  and  my  point  of  view.  And  there  was 
also  the  unstoppable  traffic  of  the  street — the  laden  camels,  the 
trotting  donkeys,  the  mules  and  horses.  I  decided  therefore 
(inconveniently  enough)  that  although  this  should  be  my  sub- 
ject— "The  Doorway  of  the  Mosque,"  or  "Leaving  the  Mosque," 
— it  must  be  done  piece-meal,  apart.  I  should  have  to  make 
stealthy  studies,  hurried  sketches  of  the  background,  the  build- 
ing; and  paint  my  models  in  some  kind  of  studio,  on  private 
premises. 

To  this  object  the  whole  of  my  eight  months'  stay  in  Tunis 
was  primarily  devoted,  though  occasionally  for  three  weeks  at  a 
time  I  might  leave  the  Mosque  alone.  A  foolish  ambition 
prompted  me  to  make  it  a  large  picture.  I  began  the  canvas  in 
my  own  rooms  then  moved  it  to  M.  de  Sancy's  garden,  and  then 
to  the  premises  of  Muhammad-ash-Sharif,  a  distinguished  Tunis- 
ian whom  I  met  in  January  or  February^  1880,  at  the  palace  of  a 
Tunisian  minister. 

Muhammad-ash-Sharif,  I  record  in  my  diary  as  being  the 
Grand  Sharif,  the  chief  religious  personage,  of  Tunis.  Some- 
times I  contradict  or  question  this  statement,  but  I  think  on  the 
whole  I  was  right.  He  was  a  handsome,  distinguished,  courteous 
man  of  great  kindness.  At  the  head  of  the  Muhammadan  re- 
ligion in  Tunis  (or  something  of  the  kind)  he  had  great  influence 


54 


THE  STORY  OF  MY  LIFE 


and  rose  superior  to  the  prejudices  of  those  days,  when  any 
ordinary  Arab  or  Moor  beHeved  it  exceedingly  wicked — "making 
a  graven  image" — to  paint  a  picture  of  any  creature.  He  actually 
posed  for  me  on  the  steps  of  the  mosque,  and  had  my  immense 
"toile"  carried  to  the  dark  street  tunnel  by  his  servants.  But  I 
was  too  self-conscious,  too  disturbed  by  the  gathering  crowd  to 
paint,  so  that  my  picture  of  him  had  after  all  to  be  completed  on 
his  own  premises. 

Nevertheless  though  this  very  large  canvas  and  its  occasional 
public  appearances  and  vicissitudes  filled  the  town  of  Tunis  dur- 
ing 1880  with  material  for  criticism,  conjectures  and  on  the 
whole  friendly  interest,  it  never  appeared  in  the  Royal  Academy 
or  anywhere  else  as  I  had  painted  it.  When  I  returned  to  London 
and  showed  it  at  my  studio  to  fellow-students  and  critics,  some 
suggested  this,  others  proposed  that;  I  abased  my  own  sense  of 
propriety  and  changed  the  background  of  the  Olive  Tree  Mosque 
— most  fatuously — for  a  touched-up  Saracenic  building  I  had 
studied  in  Spain.  The  separate  studies  I  had  made  for  this 
picture  were  all  or  nearly  all,  exhibited  and  sold  in  London ;  the 
picture  itself  never,  though  an  adaptation  of  it  appeared  in  the 
Graphic  in  1889. 

Of  course  I  had  not  been  more  than  a  few  days  in  Tunis  with- 
out paying  my  respects  to  the  British  Agent  and  Consul  General, 
Mr.  Thomas  Reade.  He  had  only  recently  come  there  from 
Smyrna,  where  my  father  had  met  him ;  indeed  it  was  the  knowl- 
edge that  he  was  at  Tunis  which  had  contributed  to  secure  my 
father's  consent  to  my  plans.  He  invited  me  to  dine  with  him 
on  Christmas  Day,  1879. 

There,  at  the  town  Consulate  of  Tunis,  near  the  Bab  al  Bahr, 
which  seventeen  years  afterwards  was  to  be  "my"  Consulate 
General,  I  made  the  Reades'  acquaintance.  Mr.  Reade,  a  tall, 
heavily-built  man,  was  moderately  genial  and  sufficiently  kindly. 
I  saw  much  of  him  in  1880  and  a  little  more  in  1881  (when  he 
came  to  England),  but  my  journey  to  the  Congo  broke  our 
acquaintance.  Reade,  if  I  remember  rightly,  continued  to  be 
Agent  and  Consul  General  until  1883,  but  then  retired  never 


THE  STORY  OF  MY  LIFE 


55 


having  been  able  to  forgive  the  French  for  entering  Tunis  in  1881 
and  henceforth  directing  its  foreign  affairs. 

It  is  a  curious  thing  that  though  visitors  to  the  country  hke 
myself  in  1880  were  conscious  that  such  a  French  movement  was 
preparing,  had  indeed  been  discussed  between  Lord  Salisbury  and 
the  French  Ambassador  at  Berlin  in  1878,  to  Mr.  Reade  it  was 
incredible  and  unforeseen — as  apparently  to  Lord  Granville;  and 
I  think  I  am  not  much  exaggerating  in  saying  that  the  French 
Protectorate  over  this  country  broke  Mr.  Reade's  heart.  He  was 
always  kindly  and  considerate  towards  myself,  but  was  annoyed 
by  the  terms  in  my  letters  on  Tunis  written  during  1880  to  the 
Globe  newspaper,  in  which  I  mentioned  as  an  imminent  event  the 
coming  French  Protectorate.  Yet  in  1881  other  letters  or  articles 
of  mine  so  far  met  with  his  approval  that  he  asked  the  Bey  to 
send  me  the  Order  of  the  Nizam.  I  think  his  intervention  did 
in  a  way  lessen  the  French  intention  of  annexation  and  moderated 
it  to  a  protectorate. 

If  Mr.  Reade  at  first  seemed  cold  and  distant  in  manner,  Mrs. 
Reade  was  different  in  every  way.  Every  susceptible  young  or 
middle-aged  man  must  have  fallen  in  love  with  her  theoretically. 
She  was  one  of  the  most  beautiful  and* charming  women  I  ever 
met;  railleuse  in  a  kindly  way,  motherly — a  little — if  you  were 
young  and  needed  it,  advisatory  when  you  wanted  advice.  Partly 
Spanish  in  origin  (I  was  told),  she  came  from  Gibraltar;  and 
seemed  to  know  all  the  Mediterranean.  I  believe  she  survived 
until  quite  recently,  and  down  to  the  beginning  of  the  Great  War 
was  living  with  a  daughter  at  Tangier. 

The  next  person  of  importance  whose  acquaintance  I  was  to 
make  was  Monsieur  Roustan,  French  Minister  and  Consul  Gen- 
eral at  Tunis.  Roustan  was  said  to  be — I  can  not  assert  it  was 
truly  so — grandson  of  Roustan,  the  celebrated  "mamelouk"  who 
had  attended  to  Napoleon  the  Great,  and  had  so  long  watched 
over  his  safety  that  one  associated  him  with  perpetually  sleeping 
on  doormats  in  a  quasi-Turkish  uniform.  But  this  ancestry  may 
have  been  a  fantastic  invention  due  to  an  accidental  similarity  of 
name.  The  Roustan  I  met  in  January,  1880,  was  just  a  southern 


56 


THE  STORY  OF  MY  LIFE 


type  of  Frenchman,  a  distinguished-looking,  rather  reserved  and 
quiet  diplomatist.  He  had  dignity  of  manner  but  there  was  no 
nonsense  or  waste  of  time  about  him.  France  had,  after  1878, 
intimated  her  special  position  in  Tunisia  by  making  Mons.  Rous- 
tan  a  diplomatic  Minister,  superior  to  an  Agent  and  Consul 
General.  Consequently  he  ranked  first  among  the  representatives 
of  Foreign  Powers.  The  other  nations  still  recognized  Turkey 
as  the  suzerain  of  Tunis,  a  position  intensified  after  the  Crimean 
War,  but  always  in  existence  since  that  unhappy  period  in  the 
middle  of  the  sixteenth  century  when  Christian  Europe  allowed  a 
Turkish  pirate  to  conquer  Tunis  from  an  Arab  dynasty,  the 
Hafsis,  who  had  done  much  to  revive  the  civilization  and  art  of 
this  once  wonderful  land.  (As  a  matter  of  fact,  the  modern 
dynasty  of  Tunis  is  descended  from  a  Muhammadanized  Cretan 
Greek  who  became  a  Turkish  military  officer  in  Tunis — a  Bey 
or  Colonel — and  about  1706  made  himself  master  of  the  province 
in  place  of  the  Turkish  Deys.) 

When  I  first  arrived  in  Tunis  the  country  was  still  recognized, 
limply,  as  a  Turkish  dependency;  but  in  the  closing  years  of  the 
Second  Empire  its  administration  had  gone  bankrupt;  Turkey 
was  not  allowed  to  intervene,  and  a  joint  British-French-Italian 
Commission  was  erected  to  manage  its  finances.  The  borderland 
between  Algeria  and  Tunis  became  a  no-man's  land,  given  up  to 
robber  tribes  like  the  Khmirs  (Kroumirs)  ;  but  France  from  1878 
rapidly  built  a  great  railway  across  the  Regency  (as  it  was  styled) 
from  Tunis  to  Suk  Ahras  and  Bone. 

I  heard  at  the  close  of  1879,  when  leaving  for  Tunis,  that  Great 
Britain  had  consented  to  a  French  Protectorate.  The  story  was 
based  on  Lord  Salisbury's  conversation  with  Mons.  Waddington 
at  the  Berlin  Conference.  But  soon  after  my  arrival,  when  I 
referred  to  this  in  a  discussion  with  Mr.  Reade.  he  indignantly 
denied  that  any  such  thing  had  taken  place.  Tunis,  obviously, 
could  not  stand  much  longer  alone;  Italy  was  scarcely  powerful 
enough  to  take  it  over,  though  such  was  the  national  wish.  We 
must  effect  therefore  some  better  defined  status  which  would 
save  it  from  decay;  for  it  must  be  remembered  that  it  was  already 


THE  STORY  OF  MY  LIFE 


57 


observant  to  a  reflective  European  that  Tunis  in  1879-80  was  in  a 
state  of  decay;  the  population  was  diminishing,  the  Desert  was 
advancing,  the  ruin — I  think  justly  attributed  to  the  Turk,  as  well 
as  to  the  hostile  processes  of  Nature — was  apparently  setting  in 
to  destroy  North  Africa,  to  place  it  all  within  the  Sahara. 

The  Bey^  of  those  days  (Muhammad-as-Saduk)  was  a  despic- 
able, effeminate  creature.  He  had  once  had  a  powerful  Minister, 
or  Wazir,  Khaireddin-Pasha,  who  had  ruled  Tunis  during  much 
of  the  'fifties  and  'sixties.  Khaireddin  was  said  to  have  been  in 
his  youth  a  Circassian  slave,  sold  to  the  Bey's  family.  The  Bey 
Hamuda  in  the  'thirties  gave  him  his  freedom,  and  his  education 
in  France.  He  became  either  Wazir  or  a  sort  of  foreign  minister 
to  Tunis  through  the  'sixties,  and  was  often  in  France  for  that 
purpose.  At  the  end  of  the  'sixties  he  took  objection  to  the  favor- 
ite of  the  day,  whom  Muhammad-as-Saduk  had  made  prime 
minister ;  and  transferred  himself  to  Turkey  where  Abdul  Hamid 
made  him  his  Grand  Vizier.  Khaireddin  had  done  a  good  deal 
both  to  conciliate  the  France  of  the  Second  Empire  and  to  ward 
off  a  French  Protectorate  of  Tunis.  In  the  early  'seventies,  how- 
ever, soon  after  the  suppression  of  the  rebellion  in  Algeria,  Mon- 
sieur Roustan  had  been  sent  to  Tunis,  and  the  first  minister  of 
that  country,  Ben  Ismain  (said  to  have  been  a  Jewish  boot-black 
at  Goletta  who  took  the  Bey's  fancy)  had  been  won  over  to  the 
French  cause. 

Lord  Salisbury  had  given  his  consent  to  an  assertion  of  special 
French  interests  in  Tunis,  or  had  expressed  British  neutrality 
at  the  Berlin  Conference  in  1878;  and  the  only  opposition  to  be 
faced  came  from  Italy.  Mons.  Roustan  set  to  work,  put  the 
Tunisian  wazir  in  his  pocket,  and  was  assisted  by  a  Coptic  minis- 
ter of  the  Bey — Monsieur  Elias  Mussali — and  by  the  latter's 
Italian  wife;  by  the  Comte  de  Sancy,  and  the  French  railway 
engineers  building  the  great  railway  across  Tunis ;  and  by  nearly 

1 1  was  told  in  Tunis  in  i88o  that  the  statement  seen  in  most  books  that 
the  Beys  had  conquered  the  Deys  and  that  the  latter  civilian  official  had 
disappeared  about  the  middle  of  the  eighteenth  century  was  untrue.  The 
"Deys"  became  subordinate  to  the  Bey,  but  they  persisted  as  the  Ferik  or 
civil  Governor  of  Tunis,  who  in  i88o  seemed  to  be  the  chief  judicial  officer. 


58 


THE  STORY  OF  MY  LIFE 


all  the  intelligent  Jews  and  a  few  of  the  Maltese  merchants  of 
Tunis.  A  French  Protectorate  in  fact  seemed  the  only  alternative 
to  what  nobody  wanted,  outside  Constantinople;  an  affirmation 
of  Turkish  power.  The  three  hundred  years  of  indirect  Turkish 
rule  over  the  Regency  had  brought  the  country  nearer  each  suc- 
ceeding century  to  depopulation  and  the  increasing  spread  of  the 
Desert.  Here,  as  in  western  Asia,  Turkish  interference  com- 
bined with  the  Islamic  religion  appeared  to  have  a  devastating 
influence.  In  1869  and  until  about  1874  it  seemed  as  though  the 
British  Government  might  make  an  effort  to  protect  Tunis  and 
reform  it  in  connection  with  Malta.  But  a  growing  anxiety  about 
Egypt,  perhaps  also  an  increasing  desire  for  friendship  with 
France  and  an  ignorance  of  Italian  power  had  inclined  the  bal- 
ance of  intelligent  British  opinion  in  the  direction  of  Lord  Salis- 
bury's gesture  toward  Mons.  Waddington.  Egypt  and  the  Suez 
Canal  in  1878  were  justly  regarded  as  far  better  worth  our 
intervention. 

How  these  circumstances,  apparent  after  1878  to  any  careful 
enquirer  in  London  or  to  any  reader  of  London  newspapers  no 
better  equipped  than  myself  at  twenty-one,  remained  unperceived 
by  Mr.  Reade  (too  much  taken  up  with  Asia  Minor,  no  doubt) 
I  found  it  difficult  to  understand  in  the  opening  months  of  1880. 
Or  rather  I  came  to  understand  in  the  course  of  time  the  real 
explanation. 

There  had  been  established  at  Malta,  soon  after  1870,  a  very 
clever  English  barrister,  Alexander  Meyrick  Broadley,  the  son 
of  a  clergyman  in  western  Dorsetshire.  Broadley  was  said  to 
have  qualified  first  for  the  British  civil  service  in  India,  but  he 
preferred  Malta  or  returned  to  Malta;  and  from  Malta  after  a 
year  or  two  he  saw  better  opportunities  at  the  bar  of  the  Consular 
Court  in  Tunis.  When  Mr.  Reade  was  appointed,  Broadley 
went  to  him  and  inducted  him  into  the  Tunisian  situation;  at 
any  rate,  from  the  Maltese  and  the  British  point  of  view.  Broad- 
ley had  acquired  both  Italian  and  French,  though  he  always  spoke 
French  with  an  indestructible  British  accent.  He  was  very  strong 
as  a  Freemason,  yet  very  orthodox  as  to  his  religious  beliefs 


THE  STORY  OF  MY  LIFE 


59 


(because  of  his  father's  standing),  very  witty,  very  much  incHned 
to  be  peevish  if  his  arguments  were  derided,  a  curious  mixture 
of  daring  and  evasion.  He  was  the  worst  enemy  the  French  had 
in  overcoming  European  opinion  as  to  their  protectorate  of 
Tunis;  yet  he  was  or  he  soon  became  a  barrister  competent  to 
practise  in  the  French  courts,  at  the  French  bar.  He  went  in 
1882— called  by  Mr.  Wilfrid  Blunt— to  defend  Arabi  Pasha  at  a 
Court-Martial.  He  certainly  got  his  sentence  greatly  modified 
and  obtained  immense  support,  and,  I  should  think,  high  fees 
from  the  Egyptian  princesses  and  notabilities  who  almost  looked 
on  him  as  the  defender  of  the  Egyptian  cause. ^ 

In  Egypt  he  opposed  anything  like  an  open  declaration  of 
British  claims  to  interfere  with  the  Turco-Egyptian  sovereignty ; 
in  Tunis — as  I  have  already  said — the  effect  of  his  defense  of 
Tunisian  nationality  probably  weighed  with  the  French  in  min- 
imizing their  demands  to  a  mere  redressing  of  the  native  govern- 
ment under  their  supervision  instead  of  that  of  Turkey.  The 
rest  of  his  extraordinary  history  has  been  sufficiently  set  forth  in 
our  newspapers.  He  wrote  at  one  time  much  for  the  English 
press  and  the  Encyclopccdia  Britannica.  A  good  deal  that  was 
new  concerning  his  work  in  Egypt  was  published  a  few  years 
before  the  War  by  Lord  Sanderson  in  connection  with  Sir 
Edward  Malet's  Life.  I  saw  very  little  of  him  after  I  left  Tunis 
and  Tunisian  affairs  in  1881 ;  but  it  is  curious  how  the  memory 
of  his  talk  lingers — extremely  witty,  sometimes  rude  and  harsh, 
querulous  and  unreasonable,  occasionally  bordering  on  the  sen- 
timental and  pious.  But  in  some  respects  the  person  he  most 
resembled  was  Cecil  Rhodes;  I  always  connect  the  two  in  my 
remembrance  though  I  am  not  aware  they  ever  met. 

To  revert  to  Roustan:  competent  or  not  to  do  so,  I  formed  a 
high  opinion  of  him,  and  was  frequently  at  his  palace — for  it 
was  that — on  the  Marina.  There  seemed  to  me  little  mystery  or 
disguise  about  what  he  was  attempting  to  bring  into  existence :  a 
French  Protectorate.    The  only  observer  who  would  not  believe 

1  His  supposed  "Anti-British"  attitude  here  served  to  reconcile  him  with 
French  opinion. 


60 


THE  STORY  OF  MY  LIFE 


what  he  heard  was  Mr.  Reade.  Roustan  at  any  rate  encouraged 
me,  when  he  found  I  was  writing  a  series  of  articles  on  Tunis 
for  the  Globe,  to  see  as  much  as  possible  of  the  Regency.  This 
was  not  very  conducive  to  the  painting  of  a  big  picture,  and  was 
perhaps  one  of  the  reasons  why  the  picture  was  a  failure;  but 
it  was  highly  interesting  and  led  at  any  rate  to  the  execution  of 
many  studies  and  sketches  which  sold  well  and  paid  my  expenses. 
The  south  of  Tunis  was  at  that  time  closed  to  me  or  to  any  other 
traveler  not  prepared  to  pay  for  a  large  escort ;  but  the  northern 
half  was  open,  owing  to  the  wide-spread  influence  of  the  French 
and  of  their  railway  construction. 

So  accordingly,  after  several  minor  excursions,  I  set  out  on 
April  7,  1880,  to  travel  as  far  as  the  unfinished  railway  carried 
one  towards  Algeria — nearly  to  the  frontier,  but  with  about  forty 
miles  to  traverse  on  horseback  before  Algerian  territory  was 
actually  reached.  This  border  region  was  then  known  to  the 
French  as  "le  pays  des  Ouchtettas."  The  Ushtettas,  apparently, 
were  a  warrior  tribe  which  included  the  afterwards  famous  clan 
of  the  Khmirs — the  "Kroumirs"  of  1881.  Probably  they  were 
mainly  of  Berber  stock,  but  in  later  years — 1897-8 — the  "Krou- 
mirs" of  northwestern  Tunis  seemed  to  me  from  the  French 
photographs  and  description  of  them  to  be  a  tribe  of  very  "Nean- 
derthaloid"  appearance;  with  much  developed  brows,  large  flat 
noses,  deep-set  eyes,  and  in  the  males  much  hair  about  face  and 
body.  The  few  of  them  I  saw — about  forty  prisoners  arrested 
by  the  Tunisian  army — resembled  then  the  photographs  of  many 
years  afterwards.  Certainly  it  became  apparent  to  me  in  1880, 
as  in  after  years,  that  the  language  term  "Berber"  covers  several 
very  distinct  physical  types ;  some  closely  akin  to  southern  Euro- 
peans; others  well- featured  but  dark  in  skin  color;  and  yet  others 
again  like  these  northern  border  tribes  of  Tunis-Algeria  similar 
to  the  Veddahs  and  a  little  to  the  black  Australians  in  facial 
features. 

From  the  end  of  the  railway  (then)  at  Ghardimau,  Mons. 
Goguel,  a  railway  engineer,  showed  me  the  pink  Numidian 
marbles  near  his  camp,  and  later  with  some  interruptions  gradu- 


THE  STORY  OF  MY  LIFE 


61 


ally  took  me  a  ride  of  forty  miles  to  the  French  camp  on  the 
border  line.  We  evidently  ascended  to  a  height  of  four  thousand 
feet.  The  scenery — heavily  wooded,  with  cork-oak,  chestnuts, 
hollies,  elms,  and  pines — seemed  to  me  entrancingly  beautiful.  It 
was  in  places  very  dense  forest,  and  appeared  to  be  full  of  game. 
I  saw  specimens — from  day  to  day — of  a  fine  lion  and  lioness, 
killed  close  to  our  camp,  a  magnificent  leopard  (of  whom  I  made 
a  picture  which  sold  in  the  summer  at  the  Dudley  Gallery),  of 
the  red  deer  of  North  Africa,  wild  boar,  porcupine,  two  kinds  of 
gazelle,  jackals,  and  striped  hyenas. 

Life  in  the  military  camp  was  delightful.  We  slept  in  large 
huts  called  "gourbis"  made  by  the  Algerian  soldiers;  and  ate  in 
a  similarly-made  mess-house.  The  French  troops  were  com- 
manded by  a  Commandant  Seris,  a  Lieutenant  Collenne,  and 
other  officers  whose  names  I  did  not  record.  One  and  all  were  as 
kind,  as  amusing,  resourceful,  intelligent,  and  gay  as  I  have 
generally  found  French  officers  to  be.  But  my  host  in  reality  was 
Allegro,  the  Tunisian  Consul  at  Bone,  who  was  deeply  engaged 
in  the  plans  for  making  Tunis  a  French  Protectorate. 

This  was  certainly  one  of  the  most  remarkable  men  I  ever  met ; 
and  my  acquaintance  with  him  extended  (with  a  great  break)  till 
1899.  Though  I  came  to  know  him  so  well  I  can  not  remember 
with  certainty  his  first  name  (probably  Joseph)  :  I  believe  in  1880 
you  could  not  say  "Christian"  name,  for  I  think  then  he  was 
vaguely  Muhammadan.  He  was  the  child  of  a  Tunisian  prin- 
cess, a  member  of  the  Bey's  family,  who  had  fallen  in  love  with 
a  remarkable  Italian  adventuer,  Colonel  Giuseppe  Allegro.  Alle- 
gro the  father  fled  from  Italy  for  some  reason  and  was  treated 
very  kindly  by  a  Bey  of  Tunis.  Somehow  or  other  he  got  to  see 
a  princess  of  the  Bey's  family  and  she  fell  in  love  with  him.  They 
fled  together  to  Bone  and  took  refuge  with  the  French  who  made 
Allegro  an  officer  in  their  army  where  he  rose  to  the  rank  of 
Colonel.  Eventually  a  reconciliation  was  effected  with  the  Bey; 
and  their  child — the  Allegro  I  knew — was  brought  up  a  good 
deal  in  the  Bey's  palaces.  He  was  sent  to  France  for  further 
education  and  in  fact  became  a  highly  educated  man.   In  appear- 


62 


THE  STORY  OF  MY  LIFE 


ance  he  was  handsome  and  might  have  passed  as  a  Frenchman. 
Eventually  he  was  appointed  Tunisian  Consul  at  Bone  (a  town 
on  the  coast  of  eastern  Algeria) ;  but  was  much  at  Tunis  and 
much  consulted  by  the  Tunisian  Government.  He  was  a  good 
deal  in  the  society  of  the  Comte  de  Sancy,  and  meeting  me  there 
invited  me  to  make  this  reconnaissance  of  eastern  Algeria  and  the 
borderland  of  Tunisia.  It  may  be  that  he  and  Mons.  Roustan, 
realizing  that  I  was  sending  a  series  of  descriptive  letters  to  the 
Globe,  wished  me  to  see  the  Tunisian  borders  for  myself  and 
testify  to  the  unsettled  nature  of  the  country.  At  any  rate  at  this 
time — 1880 — the  French  made  no  disguise  of  their  intention  to 
give  scope  to  Lord  Salisbury's  recognition  of  their  pre-eminent 
claim  to  control  the  affairs  of  this  portion  of  North  Africa. 

The  camp  where  I  mainly  resided  was  known  as  Fedj  Kelba. 
It  was  situated  near  a  northwestern  affluent  of  the  Majerda,  on  a 
high  and  densely  wooded  plateau  with  higher  mountains  of  the 
Aures  mass  rising  to  about  seven  thousand  feet.  It  seemed  a 
superb  country,  strangely  little  inhabited,  the  last  refuge  of  the 
lion,  which  in  those  days  was  seemingly  quite  common.  Allegro 
had  a  tame,  half-grown  lion  cub  at  his  house  in  Bone;  one  heard 
the  lions  roaring  at  night  time  not  far  away,  and  I  actually  saw 
the  male  and  female  lion  already  referred  to.  They  were  killed 
— prosaically  enough — by  poisoned  bait.  The  French  had  accu- 
mulated a  great  herd  of  cattle  captured  from  the  "Ouchtettas," 
and  their  presence  at  the  camp  attracted  the  lions  and  leopards. 
In  the  course  of  a  few  more  years  the  lion  in  these  regions  and 
elsewhere  in  North  Africa  became  completely  extinct.  The  leop- 
ard still  lingers,  here,  in  western  Algeria,  and  Morocco.  Those 
I  have  seen — dead  or  stuffed — in  Morocco-Algeria  struck  me  as 
being  exceptionally  large,  compared  to  the  two  or  three  varieties 
seen  in  India,  Malaysia,  and  tropical  Africa.  Their  rosettes  are 
larger,  more  jaguar-like,  and  some  of  the  males  attain  the  dimen- 
sions of  a  large  jaguar.^ 

1  Even  in  those  distant  days  of  i88o,  I  was  interested  in  and  intrigued 
over  the  distribution  of  mammals  in  North  Africa.  In  the  case  of  the 
Barbary  red  deer — Cerviis  elaphus  barbarus — it  was  obviously  only  a  larger 
form  of  the  small  Red  deer  of  Corsica  and  Sardinia.    But  .Sardinia  does 


THE  STORY  OF  MY  LIFE 


63 


My  stay  at  this  beautiful  mountain  camp  and  long  rides  to 
where  the  Tunisian  army  had  its  headquarters  extended  to  the 
end  of  April.  Then  I  returned  rather  reluctantly  to  the  town 
of  Tunis. 

not  seem  to  have  had  land  connection  with  North  Africa  in  the  Pliocene 
and  Pleistocene,  and  seemingly  the  Red  deer  of  North  Africa  has  not 
been  found  livinp  or  fossil  west  of  the  Constantine  region  of  eastern 
Algeria,  has  never  been  heard  of  in  western  Algeria,  Morocco,  or  Tripoli. 
In  these  regions  in  the  Pliocene  I  believe  there  were  other  species  or 
genera  of  deer,  but  of  an  older  type  than  Cervus  elaphus,  and  extinct 
almost  before  the  human  period  in  North  Africa.  I  have  sometimes 
wondered  whether  the  Tunisian-Algerian  Red  deer  may  not  have  been 
introduced  by  human  agency,  by  the  Carthaginians  or  Romans? 

In  the  northern  coastlands  of  Morocco-West  Algeria  there  is  a  species 
of  monkey,  the  Barbary  Ape  (Macacus  imms),  also  found  on  Gibraltar. 
This  does  not  penetrate  eastward  of  Algiers.  It  belongs  to  a  genus  not 
otherwise  represented  in  Africa,  but  once  continuous  in  range  between 
Spain,  France,  South  England,  Greece,  Tartary,  and  easternmost  Asia. 

But  in  general  the  mammalian  fauna  of  North  Africa  was  amazingly 
rich  down  to  about  thirty  thousand  years  ago,  when  the  Sahara  began  to 
dry  up  and  the  land  bridge  between  Tunis,  Italy  and  Malta  broke  down. 
Professor  Pomel  who  worked  at  the  Recent  and  the  Pleistocene  fauna  of 
Algeria  discovered  there,  well  within  the  human  period,  remains  of  giraffes, 
nilghais  and  several  species  of  large  and  small  antelopes,  a  gigantic  buffalo 
with  horns  fourteen  feet  long,  a  camel,  a  zebra,  an  African  species  and  a 
relative  of  the  Indian  species  of  elephant,  a  rhinoceros,  hippopotamus,  and 
of  course  the  lion  and  leopard.  The  African  elephant  seems  to  have 
lingered  in  southwestern  Algeria  and  Alorocco  till  the  invasion  of  the 
first  Arabs  in  the  seventh  century. 

In  1882  Professor  A.  Pomel,  a  very  distinguished  French  biologist,  began 
from  the  University  of  Algiers  working  at  the  recently  extinct  mammalian 
fauna  of  Algeria,  and  revealed  the  fact  that  although  the  vegetation  of 
Africa  north  of  the  Sahara  was  distinctly  European,  the  mammalian 
fauna  of  thirty  thousand  to  one  or  two  hundred  thousand  years  ago  was 
largely  allied  to  that  of  Tropical  Africa.  It  had  fled  from  southern  Europe — 
via  Spain-Morocco  in  one  direction,  and  mainly  from  Italy  to  Tunis  by 
the  land  bridge  which  seemingly  did  not  break  down  till  twenty  or  thirty 
thousand  years  ago — and  passed  on  south,  west,  east  to  trans-Saharan 
Africa.  A  few  forms  were  there  like  the  nilghai,  the  Indian  elephant,  the 
great  taurine  ox,  which  never  reached  tropical  Africa ;  and  most  of  them 
preferred  an  eastern  course  into  Nubia  and  the  Egyptian  Sudan.  Owing 
to  my  intercourse  with  Garrod  I  was  peculiarly  keen  to  study  this  question. 
It  is  curious,  reading  my  notes  and  letters  of  1880,  to  see  that  these  researches 
quite  shocked  some  of  the  older  French  military  officers — above  all,  their 
wives — who  thought  them  anti-religious.  Even  Broadley,  who  was  very 
orthodox  on  account  of  his  father,  was  led  into  rude  interruptions  of  any 
speech  which  traversed  the  belief  that  the  Earth  was  only  six  or  seven 
thousand  years  old,  and  reproved  the  Reades  for  allowing  me  to  talk  of 
what  probably  occurred  during  the  Glacial  periods,  several  hundred  thousand 
years  ago,  and  then  to  call  these  ages  "Recent  times"! 


64 


THE  STORY  OF  MY  LIFE 


Here  is  a  sketch  taken  from  my  1880  diary  of  the  Bey's  prime 
minister,  Mustafa  ben  Isma'in,  who  took  a  leading  part  in  nego- 
tiating and  effecting  the  Treaty  of  1881  which  accepted  French 
protection : — 

"Moustapha  ben  Ismain  is  a  young-looking  man,  at  first  seem- 
ing barely  thirty.  On  detailed  examination  however  he  appears 
much  older  and  is  probably  on  the  verge  of  middle  age.  He  has 
a  certain  disagreeable,  'cruel'  expression  in  his  features,  despite 
the  sugary  smile  which  wreathes  his  face  in  talking  with  a  Euro- 
pean in  bad  French.  Otherwise,  seen  casually,  he  might  be 
termed  a  handsome  man.  He  is  deemed  to  be  of  Jewish  origin, 
but  there  is  little  to  suggest  that  in  his  features.  His  complexion 
is  a  clear,  pale  olive,  heightened  by  a  faint  red  tinge  in  his  cheeks 
when  he  becomes  animated  in  conversation.  His  eyes  are  really 
superb:  great,  sleepy  Moorish  eyes  with  long  lashes,  and  sur- 
mounted by  thick  black  eyebrows.  Sleepy  his  glance  appears  to 
us,  but  I  can  well  imagine  it  becoming  wicked  and  cruel  as  it 
lighted  on  some  hapless  slave  who  had  offended  him.  His  nose 
and  mouth  are  beautifully  shaped  and  his  gleaming  teeth  and 
black  moustache  are  effective  items.  .  .  .  He  is  almost  pain- 
fully aware  of  the  fact  that  he  has  been  chosen  for  his  good 
looks ;  and  is  nervous  about  the  advance  of  age.  .  .  .  The  little 
Jew,  Volterra,  who  knows  most  of  his  secrets,  always  declares 
to  Sancy  that  he  makes  an  extensive  use  of  Parisian  cosmetics  in 
order  to  preserve  the  clearness  of  his  complexion. 

"He  affects  a  European  costume  and  mode  of  living,  except 
when  he  officially  attends  the  Bey  at  the  Bardo,  in  which  case  he 
is  obliged  to  assume  the  more  tasteful  Arab  dress.  .  .  .  His 
new  town  palace,  instead  of  being  as  it  is  with  his  colleague. 
General  Bakush  (minister  for  Foreign  Affairs)  a  gem  of  Arab 
architecture,  is  a  meretricious — even  horrible — medley  of  flimsy 
French  style  in  building  and  coarse,  tawdry  Italian  painting. 
.   .   .  I  think  it  is  the  ugliest  house  in  Tunis.  ..." 

The  legitimate  wife  of  Ben  Ismain  was  an  adopted  daughter 
of  the  childless  Bey,  who  lived  with  the  Bey's  wife.  The  Wazir 
used  to  pay  her  formal  visits,  but  apparently  his  real  wives  were 


THE  STORY  OF  MY  LIFE 


65 


a  collection  of  French  and  Italian  ladies  of  the  demi-monde 
whom  he  had  brought  back  with  him  from  France  and  Italy  on 
his  occasional  travels.  He  was  said  in  1880  (no  doubt  with  the 
usual  exaggeration  of  the  Levant)  to  be  the  richest  man  in  the 
Regency,  to  have  "drawers  on  drawers  of  unset  diamonds,  piles 
of  emeralds  and  a  fortune  in  rubies."  What  became  of  him  I 
never  heard  though  I  spent  two  very  interesting  years  in  Tunis 
between  1897  and  1899. 

The  Tunisian  minister  for  foreign  affairs  in  1880,  General 
Bakush,  impressed  me  much  more  favorably.  .  .  .  "The  ablest 
man  in  the  Regency.  .  .  .  Speaks  French  like  a  Frenchman. 
.  .  .  Thoroughly  conversant  with  foreign  politics.  .  .  .  His 
beautiful  palace  at  Ariana  is  a  fine  type  of  what  an  eastern  dwell- 
ing should  be,  with  its  picturesque  courts  and  splendid  gardens, 
groves  of  oranges  and  cypress,  stables  filled  with  fine  horses  and 
handsome  mules.  ..."  Bakush  (who  spelled  his  name  Bak- 
kouch  in  those  days)  had  an  Under-Secretary  in  his  department, 
a  Christian  Copt  in  origin — General  Elias  Mussali.  He  was  a 
French-protected  subject  and  the  husband  of  a  charming  wife, 
Italian  by  birth. 

Mme.  Elias  I  came  to  know  well,  and  renewed  my  acquaint- 
ance with  her  many  years  afterwards — 1898,  1899 — when 
I  was  myself  British  Consul  General  in  Tunis.  She  was  then 
an  elderly  woman  and  a  widow.  Truly  or  not,  she  had  been 
charged  by  the  violent  Rochefort  press  with  having  been  the 
principal  agency  through  which  Mons.  Roustan  obtained  the  pro- 
tectorate over  Tunis. — She  was  accused  of  complaisant  action 
with  the  Tunisian  consul  at  Bone — Allegro — in  having  prepared 
the  way  for  the  French  schemes.  But  the  real  fact  was  that  Lord 
Salisbury  "gave"  France  Tunis  in  1878.  With  his  consent  ob- 
tained there  was  no  serious  opposition  to  the  movement  in  the 
northern  half  of  the  Regency.  It  was  in  the  southern  half — the 
part  that  almost  claimed  semi-independence  in  1880 — that  fight- 
ing had  to  take  place  in  1881  before  the  French  Protectorate 
could  be  established  down  to  the  limits  of  Tripoli. 

Here  are  some  passages  written  in  1880  describing  the  Jews 


66 


THE  STORY  OF  MY  LIFE 


of  Tunis  City — or  of  other  Tunisian  towns  in  the  northeast  of 
the  Regency.  They  seem  to  me  worth  printing,  though  they 
were  already  out  of  date  at  the  end  of  the  nineteenth  century, 
when  I  renewed  my  acquaintance  with  this  country,  and  now- 
adays are  merely  of  historic  interest. 

"The  Jews  within  the  town  of  Tunis  are  said  to  number 
30,000.  They  are  the  money-changers,  servants,  interpreters,  go- 
betweens,  guides,  cheats  and  panders  of  Tunis.  Wherever  there 
is  a  market  for  their  wares  or  a  field  for  their  enterprise  there 
they  are  to  be  found.  One  feels  oneself  able  to  bear  many  dis- 
comforts and  frights  in  the  country  towns  far  away  from  the 
capital  because  there  are  no  Jews  there.  Otherwise  in  Tunis 
and  its  suburbs  they  are  everywhere  present  and  under  all  cir- 
cumstances the  same :  in  the  audience  chamber  and  highest 
councils  of  the  Bey,  in  the  consulates  of  all  the  European  Powers, 
and  in  the  lowest  and  vilest  slums  of  Tunis.  Nothing  comes 
amiss  to  the  Jew;  he  crawls  through  all  trades.  You  may  see 
him  everywhere :  hurried,  agitated,  thrusting  out  his  dirty  hand ; 
greedy,  quarreling,  indefatigable,  asking  for  justice  and  pleading 
for  mercy.  He  is  equally  despised  by  Christians  and  by  Mas- 
lamin;  only  he  is  indispensable  to  both. 

"The  Tunisian  Jews  claim  to  have  lived  in  this  part  of  the 
African  coast  from  before  the  birth  of  Christianity,  to  have  come 
here  in  the  time  of  the  Ptolemies.  They  have  no  strongly  marked 
racial  features  or  originality  of  their  own,  few  prejudices  and  no 
pride.  Their  prosperity  is  owing  to  the  facility  with  which  they 
assume  the  manners  and  customs,  the  languages,  virtues  and  vices 
of  other  races.  In  the  whole  of  my  stay  here  I  have  only  met  five 
types  of  'superior,'  gentlem.anly  Jew;  and  they  seem  to  have 
been  of  Spanish  or  Gibraltar,  Austrian  or  Turkish  origin,  and 
were  merchants  living  in  the  southern  towns  on  a  European 
footing. 

"In  Tunis  itself  their  aptitude  for  intrigue  and  underhand 
policy,  coupled  with  their  ubiquity  and  activity,  render  them 
very  useful  to  the  Foreign  Consuls-general,  who  employ  them 
to  do  their  dirty  work  with  the  Tunisian  Government.  There 


THE  STORY  OF  MY  LIFE 


67 


is  here  in  Tunis  and  its  environs  at  the  present  time  a  Jew 
of  Tuscan  origin  named  Volterra  who  may  well  serve  as  a  type 
for  description.  He  is  short  and  stoutly  built,  but  by  no  means 
ill-looking — is  dressed  sometimes  after  the  Tunisian  Jewish 
fashion  in  a  short  coat  and  baggy  breeches  of  the  prescribed 
gray-blue  color,  and  generally  wears  a  black  fez.  Owing  to  his 
ascendancy  over  the  First  Minister,  Mustafa  ben  Ismain — to 
whom  he  acts  in  the  capacity  of  jester,  adviser,  interpreter  and 
recruiter  of  Jewish  dancing-women — he  is  much  courted  and 
employed  by  certain  important  personages,  chiefly  on  the  French 
side.  They  have  introduced  him  to  me,  and  have  requested  him 
to  help  me  to  get  models  and  obtain  admission  to  private  houses 
to  study  their  architecture.  The  tips  I  could  give  him  would  not 
be  worth  his  notice ;  nor  does  he  help  me  for  any  other  purpose 
than  to  oblige  those  who  asked  him  to  assist  me.  .  .  .  Though 
of  Italian  origin  he  has  accepted  the  higher  emoluments  of  a 
rival  power  and  zealously  works  for  the  advancement  of  its 
interests  and — where  they  come  into  conflict — the  defeat  of 
Italy's  designs.  .  .  .  The  Italians  revile  his  character.  When- 
ever he  is  suspected  of  duplicity  in  regard  to  French  designs, 
the  French  menace  him  with  a  prosecution  before  the  Italian 
Consulate ;  but  so  long  as  he  remains  faithful  the  sun  of  French 
favor  shines  on  him.  I  occasionally  see  his  stout  little  person 
in  European  costume,  glittering  with  foreign  orders,  in  the 
background  of  official  entertainments." 

Elsewhere  I  wrote  rather  a  contrary  description:  "In  spite 
of  all  the  emoluments  and  presents  showered  on  him,  this  curious 
little  Jew  does  not  grow  rich.  He  is  a  gambler  at  heart  and  as 
fast  as  he  makes  one  fortune  he  loses  it  in  'operations  financieres.' 
But  during  all  his  fluctuations  between  millionaire  (in  piastres) 
and  pauper  with  dishonored  paper,  his  mode  of  living  is  just 
the  same.  I  went  to  see  him  after  some  successful  coup  on 
a  foreign  bourse ;  but  his  house  was  a  picture  of  squalid  misery : 
ragged  children  with  dirty  faces  and  running  noses,  only  inter- 
mitting their  dismal  howling  and  perpetual  squabbling  to  follow 
me  with  wondering  eyes  as  I  mounted  the  narrow  staircase.  The 


68 


THE  STORY  OF  MY  LIFE 


reception  room  seemed  bare  of  anything  save  dirt.  A  few  tawdry 
prints  of  Garibaldi,  Napoleon  iii.  and  Mustafa  ben  Ismain  hung 
unframed  on  the  walls ;  and  the  solitary  piece  of  furniture  was 
a  low  divan  at  one  end  of  the  room,  covered  with  a  loud  chintz. 

"Thereon  sat  the  little  man,  the  favorite's  favorite,  reported 
to  be  worth  thousands  in  either  notes  or  specie ;  clad  in  a  soiled 
dressing  gown,  and  smoking  cheap  cigarettes.  Shortly  after- 
wards there  was  a  fall  in  Tunisian  stock  and  Volterra  was  said 
to  be  ruined;  but  his  mode  of  living  was  if  anything  somewhat 
improved.  His  wife  on  my  next  visit  opened  the  door  to  me 
decked  with  a  magnificent  ruby  necklace  that  her  husband  had 
just  given  her. 

"After  one  of  his  successful  strokes  of  luck  he  invited  us 
(Roumefort  and  me)  to  a  grand  evening  entertainment  at  which 
he  had  announced  that  'all  the  European  consuls-general  would 
be  present.'  We  went  out  of  curiosity,  for  Volterra  gave  the 
most  profuse  descriptions  of  the  preparations  for  the  fete.  The 
afore-mentioned  reception  room  was  crowded  when  we  entered 
by  Jews  of  both  sexes  and  of  all  conditions;  but  we  looked  in 
vain  for  the  representatives  of  foreign  powers;  and  the  only 
so-called  personage  of  distinction  was  a  dubious,  second-class 
Tunisian  'minister,'  reported  to  be  smitten  with  the  charms  of 
Mme.  Volterra;  which  lady,  by  the  bye,  was  seated  in  all  the 
glory  of  paint  and  powder  and  in  a  European  silk  dress  at  the 
center  of  the  divan.  Having  paid  our  devoirs  we  glanced  at 
the  buffet  where — we  had  been  told — a  splendid  banquet  awaited 
us.  Viands  there  were,  but  of  untempting  description:  cold 
fried  fish,  reeking  with  oil,  pickled  olives,  doubtful  anchovies, 
mixed  biscuits,  Barcelona  nuts,  and  a  compound  of  oily  pancake 
and  honey.  These  were  flanked  with  various  bottles  marked 
'Champagne,  premiere  qualite,'  'Vermouth'  and  'Absinthe.'  .  .  . 
As  the  saloon  was  insufficient  to  accommodate  the  numerous 
guests,  two  bedrooms  adjoining  it  were  given  up  to  mirth  and 
revelry.  I  saw  excited  Jews  even  clambering  on  to  the  swaying 
tops  of  the  four-poster  beds  in  order  to  obtain  a  better  view 
of  what  was  going  on.    The  entertainment  was  designated  'una 


THE  STORY  OF  MY  LIFE 


69 


serata  armonica,'  and  consisted  of  music  and  dancing.  The 
music  was  a  collection  of  vulgar  and  hackneyed  European  airs, 
played  by  indifferent  Jewish  musicians;  and  the  dances  were 
performed  by  two  fat  Jewesses  and  one  lanky  man.  They  were 
both  stupid  and  obscene,  though  the  worst  of  the  obscenity  was 
the  attitudes  and  gestures  of  the  fat  women ;  for  the  man  seemed 
a  hunted  and  embarrassed  figure.  ..." 

The  Jewish  quarter  of  Tunis  seemed  to  be  scattered  over  a 
belt  of  the  great  town  between  the  old  seaward  European  quarter 
and  the  true  Moorish  city,  though  of  course  the  main  thorough- 
fares ran  through  it.  I  was  told  it  was  distinctly  marked  out 
by  law,  and  Jews  were  forbidden  to  reside  elsewhere,  unless 
they  were  subjects  of  foreign  powers.  It  was  in  those  days 
easy  to  know  when  you  had  entered  the  Ghetto,  for  the  contrast 
between  it  and  the  Arab  town  was  forcibly  marked.  The  latter 
in  contrast  was  clean  and  dignified,  and  really  the  Jewish  streets 
in  some  places  seemed  a  horrible  sewer.  The  slits  between  the 
blocks  of  dirty  houses  which  were  called  "streets"  were  choked 
with  accumulated  filth  and  often  rendered  impassable  by  pools 
of  foul,  stagnant  water  that  drained  from  the  heaps  of  manure 
and  garbage  lining  the  slimy  walls  on  either  side.  No  attempt 
was  made  to  enable  one  to  traverse  these  gulfs  without  sinking 
up  to  the  ankle  in  mire.  Even  a  few  stepping  stones  might  have 
done  something;  but  no!  the  Jews  were  content  to  pass  every 
morning  through  these  sloughs  of  despond  and  therefore  Chris- 
tians must  do  the  same.  Here  one  was  brought  up  against  the 
rotting  carcass  of  a  dog  round  which  the  flies  were  buzzing; 
farther  on,  under  a  gloomy  archway,  one  might  come  across  a 
group  of  houses  which  by  falling  forward  across  the  street  on 
either  side  had  been  saved  by  the  contact  of  their  roofs  from 
collapsing.  They  were  still  inhabited  though  all  their  upper  floors 
were  on  a  slant.  Dirty  children  were  playing  with  the  remains 
of  a  dead  rat  in  the  runnel  of  the  street.  At  the  slanting  doors 
of  the  houses  stood  disheveled,  bold-faced  women  who  exchanged 
loud  gossip  with  their  neighbors,  or  clinked  about  the  roadway 
in  pattens.    At  a  house  still  standing  erect,  beyond  where  the 


70 


THE  STORY  OF  MY  LIFE 


sky  was  again  visible,  the  women  were  bellowing  with  inarticulate 
cries  over  the  death  of  an  inmate.  Or  the  uproar  might  have 
been  caused  by  a  quarrel.  Two  Jewish  husbands  might  be  fight- 
ing like  cats,  tooth  and  nail;  whilst  their  women  folk  were 
adjuring,  assisting,  defending,  or  attempting  to  separate  them. 
By  the  wayside  stood  hawkers  of  cheap  jewelry  and  sweetmeats 
proclaiming  the  excellence  of  their  wares.  As  regards  the  sweet- 
meats their  praise  would  not  be  out  of  place,  for  these  Tunisian 
Jews  in  those  days  made  wonderfully  good  confectionery; 
though  if  a  European  had  seen  where  it  was  made  and  where 
sold,  he  might  have  been  afraid  to  touch  it. 

Their  taste  in  furniture  and  architecture  was  non-existent. 
Plenty  of  gilding  and  imitation  jewelry,  gaudy  colors — bright 
violet,  Prussian  blue,  orange  and  scarlet ;  loud  French  wall-papers, 
cheap  and  tawdry  Italian  furniture.  .   .  . 

The  dress  of  the  women  had,  however,  a  very  archaic  appear- 
ance and  preserved  about  it  more  originality  and  taste.  It  was 
said  to  be  of  extreme  antiquity,  to  have  descended  to  these  days 
from  the  time  of  the  Roman  Empire.  The  body  from  the  hips 
to  the  ankles  was  tightly  and  stiffly  clothed  in  breeches  and 
gaiters,  having  the  legs  quite  free.  From  the  back  of  the  head 
arose  a  stiff  horn,  and  to  its  peak  was  fastened  a  white,  silky 
burnijs  which  was  brought  round  the  cheeks  and  fastened  under 
the  chin.  It  covered  much  of  the  upper  surface  of  the  body, 
but  of  course  the  face  which  was  framed  by  this  white  vestment 
was  fully  exposed  and  frequently  very  beautiful;  almost  invari- 
ably so,  between  the  ages  of  fourteen  and  twenty.  The  complex- 
ion was  singularly  fair,  and  the  natural  pink  and  white  was  en- 
hanced by  painting  and  powder.  Their  eyes  were  splendid. 

The  Jewesses  of  Tunis  had  no  predominance  of  nose  nor 
did  they  assume  in  old  age  that  vulture  physiognomy  which  in 
some  countries  makes  them  ugly  or  tragic.  Age  was  only  distin- 
guished from  youth  by  increasing  obesity.  After  thirty  they 
tended  to  become  coarse,  unwieldy  and  fat;  but  between  the 
beginning  of  womanhood  and  thirty  they  seemed  to  me  monoton- 


THE  STORY  OF  MY  LIFE 


71 


ously  beautiful.  The  men  were  frequently  good  looking  too, 
and  very  seldom  suggested  a  Semitic  origin.^ 

Their  behavior  as  husbands,  once  the  very  ceremonious  mar- 
riage is  concluded  was  generally  reported  as  irreproachable.  Even 
though  Madame  Volterra  may  have  for  business  purposes  con- 
sented to  futile  caresses  on  the  part  of  the  "second-class  Tunisian 
minister"  I  doubt  very  much  whether — for  any  inducement — 
she  consented  to  an  act  of  adultery.  Yet,  similarly  with  certain 
Berber  or  Arabized  Berber  tribes  in  North  Africa,  there  was 
great  liberty  of  conduct,  unashamed  prostitution  among  the 
marriageable  girls  when  they  were  in  their  teens.  Once  espoused 
they  were — as  far  as  one  could  learn  in  1880 — faithful  wives 
and  obviously  devoted  mothers.  The  love  of  children  among 
the  Tunisian  Jews  of  that  time  was  carried  to  an  absurd  degree. 
And  though  the  children  were  to  the  superficial  observer  peevish, 
passionate  and  rude  in  manners,  one  had  to  admit  they  were 
attractive,  the  girls  extraordinarily  pretty,  with  little,  dainty, 
deft  ways  of  rendering  household  assistance  to  their  mothers. 
These  rosy-cheeked,  bright-eyed,  prettily-clad  little  girls  looked 
strangely  out  of  keeping  with  the  incredible  filth  of  the  Jewish 
streets  and  dwellings. 

A  Tunisian  Jewish  cemetery  was,  however,  one  of  the  saddest, 
most  despairing  places  I  ever  visited :  the  negation  of  hope :  death 
indeed.  All  the  graves  were  covered  with  great  fiat  slabs  of 
marble  on  which  were  engraved  the  names  and  date  of  death 
of  the  deceased,  and  verses  from  the  Old  Testament  or  the 
Talmud.  All  the  grave-stones  were  precisely  alike  in  shape,  size, 
and  material.  If  the  deceased  was  a  pauper  the  cost  of  his 
interment  was  met  by  the  community.  The  languages  in  which 
the  inscriptions  were  indited  were  several:    Arabic,  Hebrew, 

1  If  the  fore-fatherhood  of  Shem  is  intended  to  cover  the  peoples  speaking 
"Semitic"  languages,  it  can  not  at  the  same  time  be  attributed  to  several 
races  of  Jews  or  to  most  of  the  Arabs;  in  that  the  Samaritan  Jews,  those 
of  Tunis  and  North  Africa  generally,  even  of  Abyssinia,  seldom  present 
the  "Armenoid"  appearance  of  the  European  Jew  and  the  Assyrian  with 
the  curved  nose. 


72 


THE  STORY  OF  MY  LIFE 


French,  Italian  and  Spanish.  No  flowers  or  any  other  adorn- 
ment of  the  grave  was  permitted. 

It  must  be  remembered  that  in  1880,  the  Jews  descended  from 
the  Spanish  refugees  of  the  sixteenth  century  were  still  numer- 
ous and  of  rather  an  aristocratic,  reserved,  select  type.  They, 
too,  were  a  handsome  set,  with  little  of  the  typical  "Armenoid" 
Israelite  about  them. 

When  I  returned  to  Tunis  in  May,  1880,  I  desired  to  finish 
my  large  picture  of  the  Mosque  of  the  Olive  Tree.  At  this 
I  painted  intermittently  till  the  end  of  June,  when  it  was  more  or 
less  completed;  but  I  became  weary  of  the  task.  The  great 
difficulty  was  to  get  models,  and  having  got  them,  to  induce 
them  to  come  day  after  day  till  the  work  on  them  was  finished. 
I  was  ill  for  part  of  this  time  with  Malta  fever;  and  as  most  of 
my  friends  were  leaving  for  Europe  in  July,  I  was  very  glad  to 
go  home  too,  though  profoundly  interested  by  my  eight  months' 
stay  in  North  Africa.  It  had  altered  the  bent  of  my  life.  I  have 
still  enjoyed  making  studies  and  sketches  of  beasts,  birds,  and 
men,  of  landscapes  and  buildings :  studies  that  took  up  a  few 
hours  or  a  few  days.  But  the  elaborate  composition  of  pictures 
like  my  huge  representation  of  the  Olive  Tree  Mosque  and  its 
crowd  of  worshipers  wearied  me  and  did  not  seem  worth  the  time 
spent  on  them.  I  was  instinctively  a  photographer  but  not  a 
composer;  a  painter  of  pictures  best  rendered  by  the  camera  and 
the  lens. 

The  events  of  that  spring  had  turned  my  thoughts  towards 
the  politics  of  Africa,  towards  diplomacy,  the  enlargement  of  the 
British  Empire.  The  extent  to  which  I  had  mastered  French 
had  opened  to  me  a  whole  new  world  of  thought.  I  had  also 
arrived  in  Tunis  similarly  acquainted  with  Italian  and  Spanish. 
It  was  no  doubt  a  comparatively  paltry  achievement,  equaled  by 
many  a  young  Englishman  who  goes  out  to  South  America, 
Egypt  or  Spain;  but  what  a  difference  it  made,  if  only  in  the 
enlargement  of  reading !  Then,  during  these  eight  months  I  had 
learned  a  considerable  amount  of  Arabic ;  I  had  some  knowledge 
of  Portuguese  and  German.  .  .  .  Europe  seemed  posing  for 


TlUl  STORY  OF  MY  LIFE 


73 


a  great  attack  on  Africa,  a  great  plunge  into  Asia.  The  Turkish 
Government  of  Tunis  was  hopelessly  decayed.  .  .  .  Was  that 
of  Morocco,  of  Egypt,  of  Turkey  any  better  ?  My  visit  to  eastern 
Algeria,  brief  as  it  had  been,  had  shown  me  the  vast  difference 
between  a  region  that  had  been  governed  for  a  few  years  by 
France;  and  Tunis,  under  Turkish  rule  since  the  sixteenth  cen- 
tury. France  would  take  Tunis  in  a  few  months  or  another 
year — I  was  convinced:  Italy  would  be  bound  to  intervene  in 
Tripoli;  Spain,  England  or  France  in  Morocco,  England  or 
France  or  both  together  in  Egypt,  in  Syria,  in  Mesopotamia. 
What  was  to  happen  south  of  the  Sahara?  Zanzibar?  West 
Africa?  The  Congo  Basin?  South  Central  Africa? 

I  was  not  physically  very  strong  in  those  times.  Probably 
when  stationary  in  Tunis  or  in  England  I  ate  too  much,  for 
many  years.  But  when  I  traveled  and  even  underwent  consid- 
erable hardships  (other  than  cold)  I  was  well.  I  had  come  to 
Tunis  originally  for  health  as  much  as  for  any  other  reason.  In 
a  measure  I  had  been  rewarded.  But  after  my  return  to  England 
in  July,  1880,  health  troubles  again  assailed  me.  .   .  . 

Nevertheless  an  intense  desire  to  be  self-supporting,  not  to 
seem  to  have  failed,  kept  me  at  work  with  brush  and  chalk  and 
Indian  ink  at  my  studio  in  Chelsea.  I  painted  landscapes  in 
Devonshire  and  the  Wye  Valley  to  compete  for  Royal  Academy 
medals  among  the  Academy  students,  but  only  obtained  a  "prox- 
ime  accessit"  or  an  honorable  mention ;  I  exhibited  and  sold  most 
of  my  smaller  Tunis  studies;  I  painted  in  the  (then)  beautiful 
pine  woods  of  Bournemouth,  on  the  downs  of  south  Dorsetshire, 
and  at  the  wonderful  swannery  of  Abbotsbury ;  or  in  Kent  round 
about  Rochester.  But  in  London,  either  at  Champion  Hill  or  at 
my  studio  in  Chelsea  I  was  seldom  well.  How  much  was  imagi- 
nation, how  much  genuine  malady,  I  can  not  say.  I  had  an 
exceedingly  comfortable  home  and  was  much  attached  to  my 
brothers  and  sisters.  We  used  to  get  up  with  our  cousins  elabo- 
rate theatricals ;  for  my  father,  with  his  inconsistency,  though  he 
disapproved  of  the  London  theaters — except  when  they  trans- 
ferred their  companies  to  the  Crystal  Palace — was  in  reality  very 


74 


THE  STORY  OF  MY  LIFE 


fond  of  witnessing  stage  performances.  I  wrote  some  of  the 
pieces  we  acted,  and  used  to  send  them  after  this  trial  to  the 
German  Reeds,  whence  they  were  invariably  returned  with  cold 
phrases  of  rejection. 


CHAPTER  IV 


Maurice  de  Roumefort  had  gone  home  from  Tunis  in  May, 
1880,  owing  to  the  illness  and  death  of  his  mother;  and  after 
her  death,  being  the  eldest  son  of  his  father,  he  had  decided  to 
settle  down  in  France  on  the  family  estate  near  St.  Jean  d' Angely. 
He  asked  me,  early  in  the  summer  of  1881,  to  come  and  spend 
a  fortnight  with  his  people.  I  was  going  to  Paris  with  my  eldest 
brother  and  his  wife,  so  I  accepted,  and  went  on  at  the  beginning 
of  July  to  St.  Jean  d'Angely  (in  the  direction  of  Rochefort) 
whence  one  had  to  drive  seven  miles  to  my  friend's  home  at  Ver- 
vant.  Vervant  was  a  delightful  place — an  extensive  chateau,  the 
stables  of  which  were  the  vestiges  of  the  old  house  which  dated 
from  the  fourteenth  century  and  had  once  been  in  the  possession 
of  the  English.  The  modern  chateau  had  been  rebuilt  about 
thirty  years  before  1881,  or  even  later.  But  it  seemed  to  me — in 
1881 — in  very  good  taste,  and  in  congruity  with  the  vestiges  of 
the  old  building.  Indeed  at  that  time  it  might  have  been,  in  most 
respects  of  taste,  convenience  and  sanitation,  ranked  as  an 
achievement  in  French  domestic  architecture.  Through  its  flat 
park,  studded  with  superb  poplars  and  groups  of  tall  oaks,  ashes, 
elms,  and  aspens  flowed,  tranquilly  and  deeply,  the  little  Boutonne 
River,  to  be  merged  with  the  Charente  near  its  mouth.  Though 
the  country  was  perfectly  flat  it  seemed  to  me  of  rare  beauty, 
a  landscape  of  eighteenth  century  French  fairy  tales.  Cognac 
and  Saintes  were  not  very  far  away. 

I  came  to  this  lovely,  sleepy  place  for  an  ostensible  fortnight 
and  I  stayed  three  months.  De  Roumefort's  father — the 
Vicomte — was  charming,  merry,  hospitable — a  Frenchman  with- 
out a  fault.  He  occasionally  shed  a  tear  in  impulsive  sorrow  of 
remembrance  of  his  wife,  who  had  died  the  year  before  and 
whom  every  one  asserted  to  have  been  a  perfect  woman.  His 

75 


76 


THE  STORY  OF  MY  LIFE 


stately  old  mother,  eighty  years  old,  the  Comtesse  de  Roumefort, 
kept  house  for  him.  His  elder  brother  the  Comte  lived  at  one 
of  the  towns  near  by.  He  was  or  had  been  mayor  of  it,  but — 
though  possessed  of  a  beautiful  home — was  said  to  be  much 
poorer  than  his  younger  brother,  the  master  of  Vervant.  The 
Comte  de  Roumefort  was  also  a  widower.  I  fancy  he  had  no 
son,  but  he  possessed  a  daughter — Jeanne — whom  I  shall  not 
easily  forget. 

She  seemed  to  me — then — unique ;  about  thirty  years  old,  nice- 
looking,  destined — I  know  not  why — to  maidenhood,  libre  pen- 
seuse,  yet  on  the  best  of  terms  with  the  cure,  amazingly  clever 
and  well-read,  knowing  English,  musical,  absolutely  outspoken 
on  all  subjects.  I  should  have  said  a  perfect  woman,  and  so  mod- 
ern in  her  outlook  that  as  I  look  back  it  amazes  me  to  think  I 
have  not  seen  her  since  the  autumn  of  1881.  She  appeared  to  be 
absolutely  good,  but  she  would  talk  on  any  subject — like  a  man. 
All  her  relations  loved  her,  but  she  always  said — if  pressed — 
that  she  was  too  poor  to  marry.  She  has  stood  out  in  my  remem- 
brance as  one  of  the  most  remarkable  women  I  have  met  in  my 
life.  And  yet  I  never  heard  or  saw  any  more  of  her  after  that 
three  months'  acquaintance. 

For  two  months  out  of  the  three  we  led  a  water  life  at  Vervant. 
On  the  days  when  no  excursion,  no  party  was  in  contemplation, 
we — the  men — came  down  from  our  bed-chambers,  after  our 
early  breakfasts,  clothed  simply  in  a  Tunisian  gandura,  socks  and 
shoes.  A  gandura  was  an  ample  garment  with  short,  broad 
sleeves  and  a  hole  through  which  to  pass  the  head.  It  came  down 
to  the  ankles,  had  no  seam,  was  perfectly  decent  yet  scarcely 
touched  the  lower  part  of  the  body,  and  was  the  coolest  vesture 
I  have  ever  donned.  The  river  was  about  two  hundred  yards 
from  the  house  and  was  thickly  shrouded  by  magnificent  trees. 
Once  at  the  riverside  we  could  remove  the  gandura  and  hang  it 
to  a  tree  and  swim  up  and  down  the  stream,  punt,  fish  or  paddle 
a  canoe.  You  could  travel  a  mile  up  and  a  mile  down  stream 
without  meeting  a  house  or  anything  more  frightening  than  an 
occasional  garde-chasse  or  shepherd.    Of  course  all  this  time 


THE  STORY  OF  MY  LIFE 


77 


the  temperature  was  that  of  a  real,  hot,  French  summer — con- 
stantly about  80°  and  rising  often  to  95°,  or  whatever  was  its 
equivalent  in  centigrade.  I  had  my  easel,  canvases  and  paint 
box  in  the  ample  boat-house.  Being  diligent  by  nature  I  could 
not  spend  more  than  an  hour  or  two  in  idleness;  so  I  would 
resume  my  gandura  and  fez  and  work  at  one  or  other  of  my 
studies  of  water,  water  lilies,  reflections,  swans,  poplars,  willows 
and  aspens. 

I  painted  in  all  one  large  picture  of  the  Boutonne  and  its  sun-lit 
trees,  and  their  long  reflections  in  the  still,  deep  water;  and  three 
smaller  canvases  of  poplars,  of  the  full  moon  rising  above  the 
herbage,  and  of  a  harvest  field.  Three  of  these  were  shown  at 
the  Royal  Academy  and  the  Dudley  Gallery  of  1882,  when  I  was 
away  in  Africa. 

I  introduced  to  these  delightful  Roumeforts  the  idea  of  after- 
noon tea,  at  five.  Sometimes  we  went  in  at  half-past  four  and 
dressed  for  this;  on  very  hot  days  the  dear  old  grandmother 
would  come  out  to  the  tea-table  on  the  shaded  lawn  and  give  us 
our  tea  out  of  doors.  We  always  habited  ourselves  with  conven- 
tional propriety  for  dinner  at  seven,  and  to  these  dinners  often 
came  the  pleasant  neighbors,  the  noblesse  of  the  old  regime  or  an 
amplitude  of  bourgeois  vine-growers.  I  was  sometimes  taken 
for  a  day's  or  a  day-and-a-night's  stay  with  this  and  that  family 
in  the  neighborhood;  or  for  a  night  in  "town" — Bordeaux, 
Saintes,  Rochefort. 

The  Vicomte  de  Roumefort  and  his  two  boys  were  very  relig- 
ious, very  convinced  Catholics ;  a  condition  which  was  not  incom- 
patible in  the  eyes  of  the  younger  men  (or  I  should  think,  the 
father)  with  great  freedom  in  regard  to  their  relations  with 
women.  The  two  boys  were  approximately  twenty- three  and 
twenty-one.  Maurice,  my  particular  friend,  the  former  attache 
at  Tunis,  was  very  orthodox  about  fasting  on  Fridays  and  in 
Lent,  though  he  kept  as  his  mistress  a  rather  respectable  young 
actress  in  a  neighboring  town — when  she  was  not  touring  (she 
was  really  quite  a  nice  creature). 

Maurice's  natural  history,  as  affected  by  some  Roman  Catholic 


78 


THE  STORY  OF  MY  LIFE 


directions  as  to  fasting,  staggered  me  by  its  defiance  of  truth. 
A  teal  and  several  other  kinds  of  water  bird  were  computed  as 
"fish,"  and  the  young  man  positively  believed  that  teal  were  fish. 
His  menu  of  Fridays  consequently  was  sufficiently  varied  not 
to  entail  much  mortification.  The  younger  boy  (Jean)  was  pass- 
ing through  his  year — or  whatever  was  the  period — of  volunteer 
service  in  the  army.  He  was  a  great,  hearty  creature  who  occa- 
sionally got  "permission"  and  came  home  for  a  week-end  and 
returned  very  doleful :  a  noisy  clamorous  young  man,  seemingly, 
and  yet  gifted,  like  most  Frenchmen  of  his  class,  with  charming 
manners. 

The  father  was  more  modern-minded  than  the  sons,  less  pietis- 
tic.  What  surprised  him — and  me  too — was  my  relations  with 
the  Cure  of  the  village  and  my  coming  with  my  hosts  to  the 
Sunday  morning  service  in  the  old  church  (said  to  date  from  the 
fourteenth  century,  when  Vervant  was  a  stronghold  of  the  Eng- 
lish). My  religious  faith  in  those  days  was  pretty  much  what 
it  is  now :  nil.  But  I  felt  particularly  drawn  not  only  to  the  Cure 
of  Vervant,  but  oddly  enough  to  most  of  the  clergy  in  this  part 
of  France.  Some  gave  up  their  spare  time  to  poultry-breeding 
or  to  literary  pursuits ;  one  or  two  were  retired  missionaries  who 
had  served  in  Africa  or  China.  But  not  one  that  I  met  failed  to 
be  interesting,  in  one  outlook  or  another. 

I  also  found  another  class  very  different  to  the  character  de- 
vised for  them  in  current  fiction :  the  noblesse  of  western  France. 
The  Roumeforts  claimed  to  have  been  "noble"  from  some  remote 
period,  possibly  from  the  times  of  English  occupation  under  the 
House  of  Lancaster.  They  were  seemingly  related  to  all  the 
titled  people  of  the  Saintonge,  the  Bordelais  and  Dordogne ;  and 
we  moved  from  one  chateau  to  another,  visiting  their  cousins 
and  second  cousins.  The  life  lived  at  these  houses  struck  me 
at  first  with  being  "English"  as  regards  sports  and  pastimes, 
dress,  outlook  on  the  world,  and  conversation.  The  women  were 
delightful.  Some  in  their  frankness  and  education  were  like 
Jeanne  de  Roumefort.  The  men  were  just  what  men  ought  to 
be :  brave,  polite,  good  riders,  good  shots,  genial  companions,  and 


THE  STORY  OF  MY  LIFE 


79 


— it  seemed  to  me — unusually  well  educated.  Most  of  them  had 
served  in  the  army  or  were  now  serving;  many  had  traveled; 
a  much  larger  proportion  of  both  men  and  women  spoke  or  could 
read  English  than  was  the  case  with  the  middle  class  of  those 
days. 

On  the  other  hand  I  was  much  amused  to  meet  among  the  wine 
merchants,  the  owners  of  vineyards  in  Medoc  or  the  Bordelais, 
Johnstons  descended  from  incomers  of  the  eighteenth  century 
who  could  speak  no  English. 

I  left  the  west  of  France  with  regret  and  promises  to  return, 
which  owing  to  the  pressure  of  circumstances,  could  only  be  very 
slightly  fulfilled.  I  came  there,  in  fact,  in  the  summer  of  1883, 
after  my  return  from  the  Congo.  Maurice  de  Roumefort  had 
only  just  been  married.  I  visited  him  and  his  wife  in  Perigord, 
in  the  chestnut  woods,  among  the  wolf-hunters,  and  moved  on 
with  them  to  their  house  in  Limoges.  His  grandmother  was  at 
Vervant  very  ill,  and  I  was  recalled  to  London  in  connection 
with  my  next  African  expedition.  Owing  to  absorption  in  Africa 
I  have  never  seen  the  Roumeforts  again.  .  .  .  Thirty-nine, 
forty-one  years  ago !  .   .  . 

I  must  go  back  in  time  to  1880  to  deal  with  another  friend  of 
my  youth :  William  Alexander  Forbes,^  the  successor  of  Garrod 
at  the  Prosector's  Room,  Zoological  Gardens.  I  had  known  him 
slightly  in  the  last  year  of  Garrod's  life,  but  not  with  any  inti- 
macy till  after  my  return  from  Tunis  in  1880.  We  became  great 
friends  in  the  autumn  of  that  year.  He,  like  me,  had  a  passion 
for  travel.  While  I  was  in  France  he  dashed  out  to  Brazil  to 
spend  nine  weeks  studying  its  bird  life.  He  had  edited  the  book 
dealing  with  Garrod's  papers,  researches  and  short,  brilliant  life. 
When  I  returned  from  France  in  October,  1881,  Forbes  and  I 
discussed  a  project  of  going  to  study  in  Central  Asia — Khiva, 
Bokhara,  Persia.  I  wanted  to  find  out  about  the  Saracenic 
architecture  of  those  regions;  Forbes  wished  to  study  their 
fauna.    We  both  knew  it  could  only  be  done  through  Russian 

I I  assisted  to  illustrate  his  papers  and  Journal  which  were  published  in 
a  single  volume  of  478  pages  very  ably  drawn  up  and  edited  by  F.  E.  Beddard 
M.  A.  in  1885. 


80 


THE  STORY  OF  MY  LIFE 


good-will,  so  we  set  to  work  to  learn  Russian.  We  obtained  a 
tutor — half  Russian,  half  English— and  got  him  to  come  in  the 
evenings  to  my  studio  in  Chelsea. 

We  proceeded  just  far  enough  with  Russian  to  appreciate  its 
enormous  difficulties.  The  Cyrillic  alphabet  derived  from  the 
Byzantine  Greek  expresses  its  sounds  very  imperfectly;  and  in 
addition  the  language  during  the  last  five  centuries  has  pro- 
gressed and  developed  and  now  does  not  correspond  implicitly 
in  its  pronunciation  with  its  spelling ;  it  has  followed  a  path  akin 
to  English  divergence  from  the  rendering  in  letters,  though  not 
reaching  to  anything  like  English  eccentricity,  French  perversity, 
or  the  sheer  unreason — most  signal  of  all — of  the  Irish  language. 
We  were  just  beginning  to  weary  of  the  effort  to  remember  when 
o  was  to  be  pronounced  a,  and  when  the  two  symbols  for  ^  were 
to  be  rendered  e,  id,  ye  or  e,  when  large  and  complicated 
letters  were  to  be  written  but  not  pronounced;  when  something 
occurred  which  wholly  diverted  my  thoughts  from  Central  Asia 
to  West  or  Central  Africa. 

The  young  Earl  of  Mayo  of  those  days  had  sent  Mr.  Forbes 
a  proposal  that  he  or  some  one  like  him  should  join  Lord  Mayo 
in  an  exploring  journey  in  Angola — Portuguese  Southwest 
Africa.  The  project  had  apparently  been  started  through  Lord 
Mayo  who  had  already  traveled  in  Abyssinia — meeting  represen- 
tatives of  the  Trek  Boers  in  England.  There  were,  I  think,  two 
of  these  men.  One  of  them  was  a  fine-looking  fellow  named 
Jordan,  afterwards  killed  in  some  quarrel  between  the  Boers  and 
the  warlike  tribes  related  to  the  Ovambo. 

Lord  Mayo,  then  an  officer  in  the  Guards  aged  about  thirty — 
proposed  crossing  the  southern  part  of  Angola  (Mossamedes)  to 
the  unknown  southern  basin  of  the  Congo ;  at  any  rate  as  far  as 
the  upper  course  of  the  Kunene  River.  The  Trek  Boers  had 
brought  from  this  region  strange  stories  of  big  game — after- 
wards greatly  verified — of  unexplored  rivers  and  lakes,  and  of 
the  presence  of  a  beautiful  elevated  country  beyond  the  coast  belt 
where  it  was  healthy  and  there  was  no  tsetse  fly.  Lord  Mayo 
intended  to  conclude  an  arrangement  (after  reaching  this  inland 


THE  STORY  OF  MY  LIFE 


81 


plateau)  with  the  Trek  Boers  which  might  lead  to  very  extensive 
exploration  of  the  Zambezi-Congo  water-parting.  He  wanted 
an  English  companion,  and  if  the  latter  would  pay  his  traveling 
expenses  to  and  from  Mossamedes  on  the  Angola  coast,  he,  Lord 
Mayo,  would  meet  the  cost  of  travel  in  the  interior. 

Forbes  much  wanted  to  go;  but  Sclater  and  his  father  were 
opposed  to  the  project.  "How  would  you  like  to  go?"  he  sud- 
denly asked  me  one  day  in  November,  1881,  as  we  were  walking 
away  to  lunch  at  the  Zoological  Gardens. 

I  suddenly  decided  the  journey  was  what  I  had  long  wanted 
to  undertake:  an  exploration  of  Tropical  Africa.  Saracenic 
architecture  could  be  put  on  one  side,  but  my  interest  in  the  study 
of  human  races,  mammals  and  birds  would  of  course  be  greatly 
stimulated.  My  father  after  seeing  Lord  Mayo  accorded  his 
approval  of  the  project,  and  was  prepared  to  assist  me  in  its  cost 
to  the  extent  of  £200  when  I  had  exhausted  such  funds  as  had 
already  accumulated  from  the  sale  of  my  pictures  and  drawings. 

Lord  Mayo's  mother,  the  Countess  of  Mayo  (then  an  impor- 
tant person  in  Queen  Victoria's  household)  took  a  great  interest 
in  the  expedition.  She  was  a  very  practical  woman,  "with  no 
nonsense  about  her,"  who  lived  when  at  home  in  a  house  belong- 
ing to  the  Government  in  Greenwich  park,  not  very  far  from 
where  my  uncle.  Dr.  Purcell  (who  died  just  about  the  time  I 
was  leaving  in  1882),  had  resided  in  the  'sixties.  She  was  so 
sensible  and  business-like,  in  a  way  so  "simple,"  that  I  took  a 
great  liking  to  her,  I  talked  to  her  much  about  Tunis,  especially 
the  north  of  Tunis  (I  did  not  then  know  the  south),  its  possibili- 
ties, and  my  own  deep  interest  in  the  country.  When  we  had 
started  for  Southwest  Africa  she  went  out  to  Tunis  and  pur- 
chased an  estate  for  her  youngest  son  Terence  near  Bizerta — 
with  rare  prescience;  for  the  French  had  not  then  taken  in 
Bizerta's  importance.  Terence  went  there  in  the  early  'eighties, 
developed  it  remarkably,  learned  Arabic  to  an  extent  accom- 
plished by  few  Englishmen,  got  on  with  the  French  and  still  more 
with  the  natives,  and  married  a  very  nice  fellow  countrywoman. 

(In  1897  I  got  him  promoted  from  Consular  Agent  to  Vice 


82 


THE  STORY  OF  MY  LIFE 


Consul.  He  did  much  more  than  was  pubHcly  known  to  deal 
with  the  embarrassing  situation  between  the  French  and  ourselves 
in  1897-9.  For  one  thing,  his  mother  in  '83  or  '84  had  con- 
sciously or  unconsciously  bought  up  the  most  strategically  impor- 
tant land  commanding  Bizerta  harbor  and  outlet  and  presented 
it  to  her  son.  Unless  the  French  had  expropriated  him  it  was 
impossible  to  build  forts  in  the  right  position  to  command  and 
control  the  narrow  outlet  from  Bizerta  harbor.  Why  they  did 
not  take  these  measures — as  we  expected  they  were  going  to — 
I  can  not  say.  Possibly  they  found  it  wa?  too  late,  or  that  Bizerta 
for  their  fleet  was  likely  to  prove  a  Santiago — just  after  Santiago 
had  been  captured  and  the  Spanish  fleet  destroyed  by  the  Ameri- 
cans. Practically  nothing  of  this  silent  duel  between  smiling 
Terence  Bourke  and  his  shrewd  old  mother,  on  the  one  hand, 
and  the  French  republic,  on  the  other,  became  known  at  the  time. 
Bourke  spoke  perfect  French,  and  when  the  nightmare  passed 
away — I  hope  for  ever — of  a  war  a  outrance  between  France 
and  Britain,  no  one  was  more  delighted  than  he.  He  died — alas ! 
— in  May,  1923,  after  these  lines  were  written.) 

Lady  Mayo's  second  son,  Maurice,  was  a  distinguished  naval 
officer  whom  I  did  not  come  to  know  till  sometime  afterwards. 
He  was  much  in  the  Mediterranean  and  came  within  an  ace  of 
being  killed — except  that  he  was  a  good  swimmer — when  Ad- 
miral Tryon's  ship,  the  Victoria,  ran  into  the  man-of-war  com- 
manded by  Maurice  Bourke  off  the  Syrian  coast. 

Algernon,  the  third  son  (who  died  early  in  1922),  was  in  1881 
on  the  staff  of  the  Times.  He  was  there,  I  remember,  on  that 
startling  occasion  in  late  1881  or  early  '82  when  a  printer,  an- 
noyed at  something  which  had  occurred,  managed  to  insert  a 
paragraph  into  a  speech  of  Sir  William  Harcourt  which  made 
that  statesman  suddenly  express — in  the  language  of  the  street 
— the  grossest  desires.  I  was  visiting  Algie  Bourke  early  that 
morning,  with  some  material  I  had  been  writing  about  Tunis. 
He  asked  me  what  I  thought  of  Sir  William's  speech.  "Oh,"  I 
said,  "I  never  have  the  time  or  inclination  to  read  political 
speeches."    "Well,  I  should  advise  you  to  run  your  eye  down 


Above:  The  town  of  Zanzibar  in  1884,  with  Arab  daus  in  foreground. 
Beloiii:   In  Sir  John  Kirk's  gaidens  at  Mbweni,  Zanzibar  Island. 


THE  STORY  OF  MY  LIFE 


83 


this  one,  for  I  think  it  will  make  some  stir,  and  you'll  never  see 
this  version  again." 

It  was  arranged  in  this  expedition  that  I  was  to  study  the  lan- 
guages and  to  make  natural  history  collections.  So  in  November 
and  December,  1881,  I  spent  much  time  at  the  British  Museum 
Library  initiating  myself  into  the  Bantu  languages.  I  read 
Bleek's  two  volumes  on  the  Bantu,  in  which  he  only  reached  the 
prefixes  and  nouns  (he  had  died  in  1875)  ;  and  Monteiro's  book 
on  the  regions  we  were  to  travel  through.  But  the  problem  of 
the  Bantu  languages  arrested  my  attention  peculiarly  and  I  con- 
ceived, as  long  ago  as  then,  the  idea  of  following  up  the  work  of 
Wilhelm  Bleek,  Edward  Steere,  and  Sigismund  Koelle  and  fin- 
ishing it — if  possible.  As  I  write  these  lines  it  pleases  me  to 
think  that  this  ambition  as  least  has  been  fulfilled,  forty  years 
afterwards,  when  so  many  others  have  been  abandoned  or  taken 
out  of  my  hands. 

Bleek  and  Koelle,  almost  conjointly  in  the  'fifties,  began  dimly 
to  perceive  and  enunciate  the  Bantu  problem :  the  possibility  of  a 
whole  third  of  Africa  being  occupied  by  but  one  family  of  lan- 
guages (except  for  the  dying  Hottentot-Bushman)  ;  whereas  in 
the  rest  of  Tropical  Africa  distinct,  unrelated  families  of  speech 
might  be  numbered  by  hundreds,  some  of  them  only  limited  in 
areas  to  a  few  villages,  the  space  of  an  English  county,  or  a 
province  no  larger  than  Belgium.  Bleek  was  a  man  of  such  re- 
markable intuition  in  philology  that  in  the  'fifties  and  early 
'sixties  he  had  grasped  the  fact  of  the  existence  of  the  Semi- 
Bantu  languages,  of  West  African  speech;  groups  which  con- 
tained prefix-governed  languages  allied  to  the  Bantu.  I  don't 
think  he  ventured  on  the  name  "Semi-Bantu" ;  that  possibly  orig- 
inated with  myself ;  but  he — and  less  definitely,  Koelle — called 
these  tongues  something  equivalent.  In  Central  Africa,  how- 
ever, Bleek  working  from  a  Cape  Town  basis  only  realized  and 
described  about  fifty-six  Bantu  languages,  between  the  Mombasa 
coast  on  the  east  and  the  Cameroons  and  Fernando  Poo  on  the 
west,  and  thence  along  the  coasts  southwards  to  Cape  Colony. 


84 


THE  STORY  OF  MY  LIFE 


The  tongues  of  the  interior  practically  remained  unknown  till 
after  Bleek's  death. 

Lord  Mayo  asked  me  to  write  or  to  contribute  to  the  composi- 
tion of  a  pamphlet  describing  the  purport  and  subjects  of  study 
of  his  expedition.  There  is  a  copy  of  this  in  the  Library  of  the 
British  Museum.    It  was  printed  at  the  commencement  of  1882. 

This  realization  of  the  Bantu  question  quite  diverted  my  atten- 
tion from  other  problems,  and  was  to  become  one  of  the  chief 
causes  of  my  interest  in  Africa. 

We  started  from  Liverpool  in  April,  1882,  on  an  uncomfort- 
able and  primitive  old  steamer,  the  Benguclla,  which  underwent 
the  usual  bad  weather — remitted  only  between  June  and  Septem- 
ber— in  the  Bay  of  Biscay.  I  believe  in  crossing  the  bay  the 
wind  and  sea  together  were  so  frightful  that  we  nearly  came  to 
utter  grief ;  and  arriving  at  Madeira  we  were  blissfully  detained 
there  for  repairs.  We  halted  outside  Sierra  Leone  long  enough 
for  me  to  sketch  the  gloomy  landscape  of  primitive  lighthouse, 
gigantic  trees,  and  the  forested,  cloud-swathed  mountain-tops 
which  had  arrested  the  Mediterranean  man's  attention  as  early 
as  the  voyage  of  Hanno  five  or  six  hundred  years  before  Christ. 
We  picked  up  Kruboys  off  the  Liberian  coast  but  did  not  other- 
wise stop  till  we  reached  Bonny,  on  one  of  the  many  river  mouths 
which  form  the  Niger  Delta.  This  was  the  first  landing  for  me 
in  Tropical  Africa.  I  realized  the  squalor  of  the  Niger  coast, 
the  moisture,  the  intensely  Negro  character  of  the  vigorous  peo- 
ple; but  the  splendor  of  the  vegetation  impressed  me. 

Somewhere  about  here  we  encountered  a  gunboat,  the  Ram- 
bler, belonging  to  the  West  African  squadron  of  our  Navy  which 
in  those  days  combined  the  survey  of  the  West  African  and  east 
South  American  coasts  in  one  Commodore's  command.  The 
officer  commanding  the  Rambler  was  the  Honble.  Algernon  Lit- 
tleton, in  after  years  Captain  and  Admiral. 

We  journeyed  next  to  Old  Calabar,  which  struck  me  with  its 
beauty,  its  magnificent  vegetation,  because  here,  on  the  right- 
hand  side  of  its  river  (an  affluent  of  the  Cross  River),  one  was 
on  the  edge  of  the  Niger  Delta,  almost  outside  it:  here  the  mass 


THE  STORY  OF  MY  LIFE 


85 


of  highland  which  rises  south  and  east  of  the  Benue  reaches  the 
coast  in  mountains  and  volcanoes  of  considerable  height  (such 
as  the  Cameroons).  This  indeed  is  the  beginning  of  the  western 
edge  of  Central  Africa;  and  along  the  eastern  side  of  the  Cross 
River  and  its  delta  it  contrasts  abruptly  crystalline  rocks  and 
water-worn  stones  with  the  alluvial  mud  of  the  Niger  mouths, 
which  stretches  for  several  hundred  miles  westward  to  the  verge 
of  Dahome. 

We  next  visited  the  Cameroons  River,  a  region  which  was 
preparing  through  its  Duala  chiefs  a  petition  to  the  British  Gov- 
ernment to  annex  it.  The  Rambler  kept  us  company  and  at  the 
Cameroons  I  transferred  myself  on  board  to  quarters  which  by 
their  contrast  with  the  sordid  Benguella  seemed  to  me  palatial. 
Lord  Mayo  was  fully  conscious  of  the  discomforts,  the  shocking 
bad  food  and  cooking  on  the  Benguella,  but  bore  these  conditions 
with  philosophy  since  complaints  were  futile.  But  he  realized 
that  the  lack  of  digestible  food  was  affecting  my  fitness  for 
African  exploration  and  did  what  he  could  to  effect  my  transfer- 
ence to  the  Rambler.  Here,  in  a  very  short  time,  I  became 
perfectly  well.  My  journey  from  the  Cameroons  down  to  Mos- 
samedes  was  blissful.  I  slept  in  a  cot-hammock,  slung  in  the  spa- 
cious saloon.  Everything  about  me  (it  was  a  surveying  ship) 
was  deliciously  clean.  The  food  was  good  and  nicely  served. 
The  weather  was  the  idyllic  autumn  of  Southwest  Africa.  We 
called  at  all  the  interesting  places  on  the  north  side  of  the  Congo 
mouth,  and  kept  in  touch  with  the  Benguella  at  the  chief  ports, 
until  at  last  I  was  landed  at  Mossamedes. 

Mossamedes,  we  learned,  had  been  founded  by  the  BaraS 
(Baron)  de  Mossamedes  in  the  early  part  of  the  nineteenth  cen- 
tury. He  was  the  Portuguese  Colonial  Minister  of  the  time,  and 
he  evidently  realized  that  Mossamedes,  though  sandy  and  desert- 
like, possessed  a  healthy  climate  and  might  become  a  "white" 
city  in  course  of  time.  As  we  saw  it  in  1882  it  was  an  ugly  place 
but  a  good  port  and  anchorage  for  ships:  ugly  because  the 
ground  was  blank  sand  and  the  Portugtiese  houses  looked  so  arti- 
ficial, like  the  results  of  a  game  in  "bricks"  played  by  giants.  The 


86 


THE  STORY  OF  MY  LIFE 


natives  of  the  country  were  not  abundant  on  the  sea-coast  because 
for  some  distance  farther  north  it  was  desertic.  About  forty 
miles  north  of  Mossamedes  the  sandy  desert,  gradually  narrow- 
ing till  it  was  only  a  mile  broad,  came  to  an  end.  In  the  latitude 
of  Mossamedes — 15°  S. — it  might  have  measured  thirty  or 
forty  miles  across — sand,  spotted  here  and  there  with  stones  and 
with  clumps  of  the  extraordinary  Welwitschia  plant. ^ 

We  were  for  reasons  I  have  forgotten  commended  to  the  hos- 
pitality (in  default  of  an  inn)  of  a  Portuguese  medical  officer, 

Dr.  L  e  F  .    He  was  old  then — sixty-five?  seventy? — 

so  he  can  scarcely  be  alive  now,  forty  years  afterwards,  to  read 
my  account  of  him.  I  think  therefore  I  may  be  frank  without 
indiscretion.  Outwardly  he  was  an  elderly,  upright,  rather  well- 
seeming  Portuguese,  of  considerable  learning  in  medicine,  able 
to  speak  French  as  well  as  Portuguese.  But  his  history  and  his 
enormous  household  were  nearly  unprecedented. 

He  was  reported  about  forty  years  before  to  have  arrived  from 
Portugal  with  a  Portuguese  wife  and  a  little  son.  This  little 
son  (the  wife  being  long  dead)  had  grown  up  into  a  stalwart 
military  or  naval  officer — I  use  this  alternate  phrase  because 
though  his  title  was  "Major"  and  his  standing  seemingly  mili- 
tary he  was  generally  costumed  in  what  I  took  to  be  naval 
uniform.  This  officer  had  a  separate  household  and  only  visited 
his  father  on  Sundays.  But  apparently  thirty  or  more  years  pre- 
viously when  his  Portuguese  wife  had  died,  Dr.  L  e  F  

had  taken  to  himself  a  Negro  mistress.  There  she  was :  a  woman 
of  brown-black  skin,  nicely  dressed  in  the  fashion  of  the  year 
before  last,  about  fifty  years  of  age,  directress  of  the  household. 

The  next  in  seniority  of  wives  was  her  eldest  daughter,  a 
mulatress  of  thirty  years  old  (at  a  guess) ,  mother  of  quite  a  large 

family  by  her  father,  Dr.  L          e  F  .    The  four  other 

daughters,  sisters  of  the  mulatress,  had  become  in  turn  the  wives 

^  Welwitschia  mirahilis,  a  member  of  a  sparse  order  of  plants  on  the 
borderland  of  the  conifers,  cycads  and  flowering  plants.  It  was  discovered 
in  the  'fifties  by  Dr.  Welwitsch  near  Mossamedes.  Its  range  extends  down 
to  the  Orange  River,  along  the  southwest  coast.  It  develops  two  huge 
leathery  dicotyledonous  leaves  on  either  side  of  a  low,  foot-high  trunk 
on  the  edge  of  which  (like  a  basin  of  cork)  grow  the  seed-vessels. 


THE  STORY  OF  MY  LIFE 


87 


of  their  father  and  had  had  children  by  him.  And  now  we  gath- 
ered by  this  glimpse  and  that  admission  that  he  was  in  his  honey- 
moon with  his  eldest  grandchild,  a  pleasant-looking  quadroon  of 
about  fifteen  years  of  age. 

The  boys  as  they  grew  up  became  officials,  officers  in  the  police 
force;  but  most  of  the  girls  remained  in  their  father-grand- 
father's household.  The  house  was  comparatively  large.  There 
was  no  disorder.  Lord  Mayo,  his  servant  and  I  all  had  separate, 
nicely-tended  bedrooms,  quite  clean.  There  was  only  a  crowd 
over  the  two  big  meals  of  the  day :  breakfast  at  eleven  and  dinner 
at  sunset.  The  voices  of  the  girls  and  women  were  pleasant- 
sounding  and  their  manners  were  irreproachable. 

I  was  too  much  exercised  over  drawing  Welwitschia  plants, 
Andombe  and  Akoroka  natives  to  have  attended  much  to  the 
maddening  difficulties  of  transport  which  Lord  Mayo  and  Kelly 
(his  servant)  had  to  overcome.^    I  understood  that  the  Trek 

1  While  waiting  for  the  Boer  ox-drawn  wagons,  It  occurred  to  Lord 
Mayo  that  we  would  make  a  preliminary  journey  to  the  mid-course  of 
the  Koroka  River,  about  fifty  miles  south  of  Mossamedes.  We  got  the  use  of 
one  Boer  wagon  for  our  luggage  and  provisions  and  walked  alongside 
it.  I  thought  the  scenery  weirdly  interesting  when  we  got  there.  The 
desert  coast  on  the  way  thither  was  like  a  dead  world.  We  saw  no  natives, 
no  beasts,  and  very  few  birds ;  and  in  vegetation  only  an  occasional  sprawling 
Welwitschia.  But  the  valley  of  the  Koroka  River  was  rather  a  striking 
landscape,  with  drab,  flat-topped  hills  surmounting  it.  Looking  down  on  it 
from  a  height  of  a  few  hundred  feet  I  could  descry  moving  slowly  among 
the  rank  grass  and  bushes  immense  herds  of  buffalo.  I  took  them  at  first 
to  be  the  domestic  cattle  of  the  A-koroka  people. 

But  the  most  remarkable  episode  on  the  journey  was  this.  Half  way 
there,  in  the  sandy  desert,  among  one  or  two  clumps  of  Welwitschia,  we 
descried  the  body  of  an  European  explorer  lying  on  the  ground  insensible, 
sun-smitten  seemingly.  Lord  Mayo  stopped  our  cart,  examined  the  prone 
European,  descried  no  sign  of  luggage,  companions,  expedition.  He  put 
him  in  the  cart  and  went  on  a  little  farther  to  the  place  where  we  were 
to  stay  for  the  night.  After  an  hour  or  two  the  man  woke  up,  looked 
around,  not  much  astonished,  and  introduced  himself  as  "Captain  Hans 
Vischer(?)"  He  told  us  he  was  on  his  way — as  we  were — for  the  Koroka, 
and  after  that  for  the  Kunene,  and  thence  for  a  German  mission  station 
beyond.  He  offered  no  explanation  that  I  was  aware  of  concerning  himself, 
his  being  quite  alone,  or  anything  else.  Two  or  more  years  afterwards 
when  in  East  Africa  I  was  reading  newspaper  accounts  of  the  German  claim 
to  Southwest  Africa,  I  saw  that  some  of  the  treaties  had  been  made  by 
this  man  whom  we  had  found  lying  insensible  on  the  sand,  without  com- 
panions or  help — seemingly — twenty  miles  south  of  Mossamedes. 


88 


THE  STORY  OF  MY  LIFE 


Boers  had  rather  failed  us  in  not  coming  in  time  from  the  interior 
plateau  down  to  the  coast,  being  timid  of  the  effect  of  the  low- 
lying  desert  country  on  their  oxen.  However  I  don't  remember 
much  that  was  disagreeable — or  indeed  anything.  The  interior 
was  perfectly  safe.  Fifty  or  sixty  miles  away  was  a  notable 
range,  the  Shela  Mountains,  really  the  fantastic  edge  of  the 
interior  plateau.  I  fancy  the  only  direction  in  which  there  was 
real  disappointment  was  in  the  Boers  not  risking  horses  on  the 
coast  belt,  in  case  they  encountered  the  tsetse  fly. 

But  when  the  difficulties  about  our  loads  had  been  somehow 
overcome  I  started  for  the  interior,  riding  a  mule  or  walking 
through  the  sand,  feeling  uncommonly  well  and  intensely  inter- 
ested. In  three  or  four  days  I  reached  the  Shela  Mountains.  I 
had  somehow  got  separated  from  the  others  and  from  my  lug- 
gage, except  a  small  traveling  bag  which  I  carried.  At  about 
forty  miles  inland  I  made  for  the  house  of  a  Portuguese  planter, 
advised  to  do  so  by  the  Boers.  He  received  me  with  charming 
hospitality,  with  the  manners  of  Europe  and  in  the  French  lan- 
guage. Entry  into  his  house  and  especially  his  drawing-room 
staggered  me :  it  was  civilization.  The  furniture  was  in  good 
taste.  On  the  tables  was  a  great  variety  of  literature,  including 
reviews  and  newspapers,  French  and  Portuguese,  of  scarcely 
more  than  two  months  old.  As  we  sat  at  a  well-cooked  dinner 
that  night,  served  deftly  and  silently  by  a  Negro  or  two  in  a 
white  uniform,  I  said,  as  a  thought  spoken  aloud:  "Mais  pour- 
quoi  etes-vous  venu  en  Afrique?" 

"I  ?"  he  replied  in  the  same  language,  "I  was  exiled  here 
because  I  killed  my  uncle." 

I  could  only  think  of  the  inept  reply  "Est-ce  possible?"  But 
when  dinner  was  over  and  we  had  retired  to  the  drawing-room 
and  a  smoke  he  told  me  in  separate  instalments  how  it  had  come 
about.  A  brother  and  sister  left  by  their  parents  to  be  brought 
up  by  a  wicked  uncle ;  on  the  boy's  becoming  nineteen  or  twenty, 
the  uncle  in  one  of  their  angry  conversations  about  money  and 
what  he  has  done  with  their  parents'  fortune,  aims  a  blow  at  the 
young  man  who  returns  it  with  a  red-eyed  outburst  of  wrath 


THE  STORY  OF  MY  LIFE 


89 


and  strength.  The  uncle  is  killed,  and  the  heart-broken  young 
man — because  of  his  intense  attachment  to  his  younger  sister — 
is  exiled  to  the  interior  of  Mossamedes.  "Perhaps  when  I  have 
lived  here  twenty  years — I  have  now  been  ten — they  will  let  me 
return?" 

I  climbed  alone  the  steep  road  to  the  Shela  Mountains,  through 
which  a  railway  now  passes.  Reaching  the  foot  of  that  range 
the  desert  had  given  place  to  running  water  and  rich  vegetation. 
Half  way  up  to  four  thousand  feet  the  vegetation  became  beau- 
tiful. Night  overtook  me  and  I  had  not  regained  our  caravan. 
So  I  lay  down  on  the  very  hard  road  and  tried  to  sleep  with  my 
bag  as  a  pillow.  I  soon  afterwards  came  to  know  that  the  coun- 
try was  infested  with  lions.  Indeed  I  probably  heard  them 
roaring  that  night.  But  I  slept  in  patches  of  an  hour,  half  an 
hour,  two  hours  unattacked ;  and  when  morning  broke  I  first  shot 
a  francolin  with  my  gun,  plucked  it  and  roasted  it  over  a  fire 
kindled  by  myself,  and  ate  it  well  roasted  but  with  no  condiment 
but  hunger.  An  hour's  walk  along  the  untidy  track  brought  me 
to  the  sound  of  human  voices  and  I  saw  Lord  Mayo  walking 
towards  me. 

We  reached  Humpata  the  next  day.  It  was  the  most  northern 
then  of  the  Boer  settlements.  The  country  looked  utterly  differ- 
ent to  the  desert  coast  belt.  Though  it  was  the  beginning  of  the 
dry  season  an  occasional  shower  freshened  up  the  ground  and 
helped  to  keep  the  grass  green  and  the  flowers  in  bloom.  The 
heat  did  not  rise  above  80°  in  the  daytime  and  went  down  to  40° 
at  night;  so  that  we  enjoyed  the  bounteous  wood  fires  of  the 
Boers.  The  Trek  Boers  had  already  built  themselves  substantial, 
two-storied  dwelling-houses  of  bricks,  with  thatched  roofs. 
Their  buxom  women  were  efficient  housewives :  bakers,  washer- 
women, makers  of  excellent  soup,  of  good  bread  from  wheat 
crops  sown  and  harvested  by  the  settlers  who  had  been  there 
since  about  1878. 

To  represent  the  Portuguese  Government — which  had  been  a 
little  taken  aback  at  this  invasion  of  Angola  by  Boer  families, 
an  official  had  been  established  in  the  Boer  settlements  of  Huila 


90 


THE  STORY  OF  MY  LIFE 


and  Humpata.  In  the  latter  place  Portugal  was  represented  by 
a  very  nice  young  man  who  had  married  a  pretty  Boeress.  I 
never  heard  in  all  subsequent  developments  of  any  political  trou- 
ble arising  between  the  Trek  Boers  and  the  Portuguese,  no  diffi- 
culties about  territorial  rights.  The  invaders  from  the  south 
were  not  all  of  Transvaal  origin ;  there  were  several  settlers  of 
English  blood  who  had  migrated  thither  from  the  Cape.  I  rather 
think  our  friend  and  guide,  Jordan,  was  a  Cape  Colonist.  He 
always  sided  with  the  Boers  in  regard  to  the  natives  and  a  few 
years  later  was  killed  in  one  of  the  numerous  native  outbreaks 
which  occurred  near  the  Kunene  River,  where  various  tribes 
allied  to  the  Herero  in  race  and  language  (such  as  the  Kuan- 
yama  and  the  Ovambo),  fought  strenuously  with  the  Boer  invad- 
ers and  killed  many  of  them. 

One  of  the  incomers  into  southern  Angola  at  this  period  was 
Mr.  W.  J.  B.  Chapman,  son  of  the  great  mid-nineteenth  century 
explorer,  James  Chapman.  Mr.  William  Chapman  on  entering 
Angola  trekked  steadily  towards  the  wonderfully  beautiful  moun- 
tain country  of  Luimbale,  near  Bihe.  I  believe  I  never  saw  him, 
or  realized  him  then ;  but  he  noted  my  coming  with  Lord  Mayo, 
and  many  years  later  entered  into  correspondence  with  me  when 
I  was  giving  a  sketch  of  his  father's  exploring  work;  and  learn- 
ing of  my  long-sustained  enthusiasm  for  the  study  of  the  Bantu 
languages  he  supplied  me  both  for  the  first  and  second  volumes 
of  my  work  on  that  subject  with  invaluable  information.  His 
sons  fought  for  us  in  the  Great  War.  They  and  he  were  exam- 
ples of  far-flung  patriotism. 

For  several  months  we  led  an  idyllic  existence  in  a  beautiful 
climate,  wandering  slowly  down  the  valley  of  the  Kakulovari 
affluent  of  the  Kunene  till  w^e  reached  the  broad  plain  through 
which  that  great  river  flowed.  We  must  have  struck  its  course  at 
a  point  where  it  was  in  a  very  indeterminate  mood,  saying  to 
itself  "Shall  I  flow  southward  to  the  Etosha  Lake  and  eventually 
be  carried  into  the  mysterious  system  of  rivers  which  overflow  to 
and  fill  up  Lake  Ngami  ?  Or  shall  I  turn  off  here,  pierce  a  way 
through  the  rocky  barrier  of  the  plateau,  and  make  for  the  At- 
lantic Ocean  through  the  desert?" 


THE  STORY  OF  MY  LIFE 


91 


Unfortunately  the  Kunene  decided  on  this  latter  course  some 
hundreds  or  some  few  thousands  of  years  ago.  But  it  still  sends 
in  times  of  great  rains  a  contribution  of  its  overflow  towards  the 
Etosha,  and  tempts  geographers  with  the  great  scheme  of  saving 
its  waters  from  waste  in  the  Atlantic  to  irrigate  the  desert  be- 
tween northwestern  Bechuanaland  and  the  Kalahari. 

The  shooting  became  better  and  better.  We  had  not  the  amaz- 
ing, staggering  abundance  of  beasts  that  I  was  privileged  to  see 
later  in  East  Africa;  but  the  elephants,  giraffes,  rhinoceroses, 
zebras,  buffalo,  roan  antelopes,  palas,  water-buck,  and  ostriches 
were  sufficiently  abundant — even  with  the  prior  killing  of  the 
Boers  for  four  previous  years — to  entrance  my  virgin  imagina- 
tion as  a  would-be  hunter  and  naturalist. 

Near  the  junction  of  the  Kakulovari  with  the  Kunene  there 
was  a  large  Portuguese  trading  station  (Humbe)  belonging  to  a 
genial,  hospitable  Portuguese  trader-and-slave-dealer  known  as 
Celorico.  Celorico  bought  the  slaves  that  were  the  result  of  the 
raids  all  round  about  of  the  warlike  Kuanyama  people,  one  of 
whose  chiefs  lived  at  Humbe.  There  was  also  a  station  at  or 
near  Humbe  of  the  Roman  Catholic  Mission  of  the  Sacred  Heart 
of  Mary.  This  seemed  in  those  days  to  be  chiefly  directed  by 
French  fathers,  men  of  great  worth  and  knowledge.  Duparquet, 
I  think,  was  the  name  of  one  of  their  leading  missioners.  He 
and  most  of  his  colleagues  were  bold  explorers  of  Southwest 
Africa  and  already  beginning  to  illustrate  the  languages  of  this 
district  of  South  Angola  and  the  Ovambo  country. 

I  rather  fancy  from  dim  remembrance  that  not  long  after  the 
Mayo  Expedition  left  this  region  terrible  wars  ensued  between 
the  Trek  Boers,  the  warlike  natives  of  the  Herero  stock,  and  the 
Portuguese.  Whose  fault  was  the  cause  of  these  uprisings  I  do 
not  remember.  I  should  say  they  were  mainly  caused  by  the 
irruption  of  the  Trek  Boers.  The  Portuguese  tried  to  intervene 
to  save  the  former  from  extermination  and  themselves  lost  many 
men  and  had  to  send  several  expeditions.  Most  of  the  South 
Africans  (rather  than  "Boers")  whom  I  knew  in  this  region 


92 


THE  STORY  OF  MY  LIFE 


lost  their  lives  between  1884  and  1890.  The  rest — ^thoroughly 
respectable  "adventurers"  like  W.  J.  B.  Chapman — survived  and 
made  homes  in  the  hinterland  of  southern  Angola. 

This  region  during  the  last  twenty-two  years  has  grown  more 
and  more  into  prominence  through  discoveries  in  regard  to  its 
mammalian  fauna.  It  has  seemed  as  though  Angola  is  somewhat 
sharply  divided  into  two  faunistic  regions,  with  the  River 
Kwanza  as  a  dividing  line.  South  of  the  main  Kwanza  and  west 
of  the  basin  of  the  Kwango  (the  westernmost  tributary  of  the 
Congo)  the  country  is  in  the  main  an  open  parkland  with  high 
mountains.  Here  have  penetrated  at  least  two  distinct  species  of 
zebra,  the  lion,  the  big  South  African  buffalo,  most  of  the  strik- 
ing antelopes  of  South  Africa.  Here — in  southern  Angola — 
the  Sable  antelope  attains  its  most  superb  development,  with 
gigantic  horns. 

North  of  the  Kwanza  the  flora  becomes  more  allied  to  that  of 
West  Africa,  the  Oil  palm  is  abundant,  the  gray  parrot  exists 
and  perhaps  attains  its  maximum  development  in  becoming  in 
some  examples  not  merely  the  possessor  of  a  scarlet  tail  but  of 
light  gray  plumage  increasingly  flecked  with  scarlet  on  its  way 
to  becoming  scarlet  all  over.  But  the  southern  half  of  Angola 
belongs  more  to  South  and  Southeast  Africa  in  its  affinities.  Its 
natives  speak  the  Southwest  Africa  group  of  Bantu  languages, 
a  subdivision  of  remarkable  interest  which  unfortunately  I  only 
studied  slightly  in  that  distant  year  of  1882.^ 

At  Humbe  on  the  Kunene  (Ku-nene — "the  great  river")  I 
said  good  bye  to  Lord  Mayo.  Another  friend  was  expected  to 
come  out  and  join  him,  and  I  had  been  tempted  to  part  company 
by  the  chance  of  a  visit  to  the  Congo,  then  a  land  of  scarcely 
solved  mystery,  being  gradually  opened  up  by  Stanley. 

In  the  spring  of  1882,  on  the  way  down  the  coast  in  H.M.S: 
Rambler,  we  had  called  at  Banana  Point  (mouth  of  the  Congo) 
and  at  St.  Paul  de  Loanda  (capital  of  Angola).  At  Banana  we 
had  learned  that  Stanley,  seemingly  very  ill,  had  just  departed 

1  It  lias  been  fully  dcfilt  with  in  the  first  and  second  volumes  of  my 
Comparative  Study,  thanks  to  the  assistance  of  Mr.  Chapman. 


THE  STORY  OF  MY  LIFE 


93 


for  Europe.  At  Loanda  I  had  found  a  real  friend  in  the  British 
Consul,  Mr.  Augustus  Cohen.^  Mr.  Cohen  claimed  to  know- 
Stanley  well  and  promised  me  a  letter  of  introduction  to  him  if  he 
returned,  and  if  I,  on  finishing  the  South  Angola  exploration, 
wished  to  try  my  luck  in  the  Congo  Basin. 

However,  I  had  a  subsidiary  purpose  on  the  way :  to  see  some- 
thing of  Angola  first.  There  was  in  those  days  a  remarkable 
man  named  Robert  Scott  Newton,  a  Scotsman,  who  had  made 
himself  indispensable  to  the  Angola  Government  by  keeping  a 
well-furnished  store  at  the  capital,  St.  Paul  de  Loanda,  by  run- 
ning a  line  of  steamers  up  and  down  the  Kwanza  River — as  far 
as  it  w^as  navigable  from  the  sea — and  doing  various  other  things 
to  develop  the  country.  He  was  British  Vice  Consul,  and  Acting 
Consul  when  the  Consul  was  away.  He  enabled  me  to  make  a 
very  interesting  voyage  up  the  Kwanza  in  his  comfortable  steam- 
ers and  to  draw  the  scenery  and  question  the  natives  as  to  their 
languages.  I  made  other  and  shorter  journeys  inland  from  St. 
Paul  de  Loanda  and  along  the  northern  coast. 

1  Mr.  Cohen  came  from  a  Scottish  family  (in  spite  of  his  apparently 
Jewish  name)  much  connected  with  Jamaica  and  the  West  Indies. 


CHAPTER  V 


Equipped  with  Consul  Cohen's  letter  of  introduction  to  Stan- 
ley, I  was  landed  at  the  one  Congo  entrance-port,  Banana,  and 
became  a  habitant  of  the  Dutch  house  at  that  place. 

Here  I  was  well  lodged  and  well  fed  (at  a  very  moderate 
charge).  A  great  deal  of  dignity  was  maintained  over  this  large 
establishment  of  a  dozen  Dutch  clerks,  one  or  two  doctors,  a 
steamer  captain  or  mate  now  and  again,  and  a  considerable  con- 
tingent of  visitors,  mostly  in  those  days  Germans,  Englishmen, 
Belgians  out  for  the  "Comite  d'Etudes  du  Haut  Congo,"  as  the 
nascent  Congo  Free  State  was  called.  The  lord  of  the  establish- 
ment was  Mr.  A.  de  Bloeme,  the  head  Dutch  Agent,  British  Vice 
Consul  for  the  Congo  mouth,  and  several  other  things  beside.  He 
was  always  exceedingly,  rather  alarmingly  polite  to  me,  but  could 
be  "aweful"  in  his  discipline  over  the  dozen  Dutch  clerks.  When 
any  one  of  these  had  been  naughty  he  was  not  allowed  to  be 
present  at  the  stately  meal  in  the  great  dining-room.  H  you 
instituted  cautious  and  timid  enquiries  in  whispers  you  learned 
of  his  fault  and  the  reparation  he  was  making  by  denying  himself 
to  the  world. 

I  often  thought  how  different,  how  "continental"  was  this  dis- 
cipline to  the  much  more  "equality"  proceedings  at  the  English 
factories.  Which  course  paid  better  in  the  long  run — the  severe 
discipline  of  the  Dutch  factories,  here  and  elsewhere  on  the 
Lower  Congo,  or  the  free-and-easy  terms  prevailing  at  the  Eng- 
lish Houses  (such  as  those  of  Hatton  and  Cookson),  I  could  not 
say.  One  argument  for  discipline  with  the  Dutch  was  "health." 
I  could  not  however,  in  comparing  the  freedom  of  the  English 
with  the  strict  control  of  the  Dutch,  see  that  one  House  was 
markedly  healthier  than  the  other. 

With  the  Dutch  it  was  not  thought  wrong  to  take  to  oneself 

94 


THE  STORY  OF  MY  LIFE 


95 


a  native  mistress.  On  the  contrary,  at  Banana  Point  and  wher- 
ever else  I  visited  their  compounds  the  clerks  and  their  superiors 
nearly  always  kept  a  native  woman.  The  women  were  well- 
dressed  and  happy.  Their  male  half-caste  children  were  educated 
first  in  Africa  then  in  Holland,  and  either  came  back  to  the  Congo 
or  else  to  the  Gold  Coast  as  clerks.  What  happened  to  the  female 
half-castes,  I  can  not  say;  but  I  dare  say  they  were  provided  for 
somehow. 

De  Bloeme  had  a  native  wife  or  mistress,  of  whom  one  caught 
a  rare  glimpse  from  time  to  time.  She  had  given  him  quite  a 
large  family  of  half-caste  children  in  the  education  of  whom  he 
showed  considerable  interest.  Some  years  afterwards  I  heard 
ill-health  had  obliged  him  to  retire  to  Holland,  but  I  believe  the 
last  years  of  his  Congo  consort  were  made  quite  happy  and 
respectable.  In  this  the  Dutch,  though  in  race  and  language  so 
like  us,  differed  materially  from  our  English  way  of  looking  at 
things :  they  were  what  the  men  of  Hatton  and  Cookson,  John 
Holt,  and  other  Liverpool  trading  firms  used  to  call  "continental." 
They  imported  Negro  women  into  their  African  homes  without 
either  hesitation  or  false  shame;  as  also  did  the  French  or  Portu- 
guese. Not  so  the  English,  from  Liverpool,  Bristol,  London  or 
Manchester.  These  last  were  most  of  them  married  at  home,  in 
England,  and  their  lapses  from  continence  in  Africa,  if  they 
occurred,  were  furtive.  If  they  became  the  fathers  of  children, 
one  was  told  that  they  tendered  shame-facedly  some  sort  of 
"compensation"  to  the  mother  and  then  tried  to  ignore  the  matter 
as  much  as  possible.  Whereas  the  Dutch,  French,  Portuguese 
father  brought  up  his  half-caste  child  with  care  and  kindness, 
and  if  it  were  a  boy  sent  it  either  to  some  superior  mission  school 
for  an  education,  or  even  to  Europe. 

Staying  with  de  Bloeme  at  this  time  (November,  1882)  were 
the  members  of  the  German  section  of  the  Comite  d'Etudes  du 
Haut  Congo,  or  some  German  branch  of  the  fatuously  mistermed 
"Internationale"  society  for  exploring  the  Congo:  Dr.  Pechuel- 
Loesche  and  his  companions.    It  was  supposed  by  them  that 


96 


THE  STORY  OF  MY  LIFE 


Stanley  was  not  coming  back,  was  dying,  had  been  dismissed  by 
the  King  of  the  Belgians.  The  Comite  d' Etudes  was  passing  over 
to  Germany.  Germany  "was  going  to  have  the  Congo;"  she  was 
also  going  to  take  Damaraland,  where  German  missions  had  been 
at  work.  Did  I  think  of  going  up  the  Congo?  If  so,  they  would 
regretfully  inform  me  it  was  not  now  possible ;  circumstances  had 
obliged  them  as  influential  members  of  the  staff  at  Vivi  to  forbid 
the  entrance  of  any  more  Europeans  into  the  new  zone. 

I  held  my  peace,  especially  as  I  realized  that  de  Bloeme  was  in 
league  with  these  men  and  would  take  measures  to  prevent  my 
going  up  the  river.  After  some  cogitation  and  secret  discussions 
with  one  of  our  Baptist  missionaries  who  had  come  down  the 
river  to  embark  for  Europe  I  affected  to  give  up  any  idea  of  going 
to  Stanley's  headquarters,  and  proposed  instead  to  take  a  steamer 
passage  to  the  south  bank  of  the  estuarine  Congo  and  stay  at  a 
Portuguese  factory.  Mr.  de  Bloeme  put  me  on  a  small  Dutch 
steamer  v/ith  strict  injunctions  to  the  captain  to  land  me  at  a 
Portuguese  house  about  twenty  miles  from  the  sea.  It  was  sup- 
posed that  a  large  Portuguese  steamer  would  pick  me  up  there 
and  take  me  on  to  Europe  or  back  to  London. 

So  I  was  landed  at  Kisanji,  at  the  house  of  one  of  those 
strangely  kind  Portuguese  agents  whom  it  was  so  often  my  fate 
to  meet  in  Africa.  He  was  a  man  of  some  taste  and  reading, 
and  was  rejoiced  to  find  that  I  thought  his  surroundings  beau- 
tiful. The  other  Portuguese  trading  agents  could  only  see  that 
his  factory  though  neat  and  clean  of  itself,  was  surrounded  by 
"capim"  (grass)  whereas  he  had  thought  it  would  have  been 
juster  to  call  them  "flowers." 

It  would  indeed.  The  shoreward  access  in  the  sketches  I  made 
during  my  ten  days'  stay  revealed  a  great  beach  of  alluvial  mud, 
strewn  both  with  half-buried  trunks  of  dead  trees  and  with  croco- 
diles which  resembled  them  so  closely  both  in  color  and  rugged- 
ness  of  outline  that  I  refrained  from  walking  over  the  mud.  But 
on  the  other  sides,  the  south  and  east,  the  aspect  of  the  forest  was 
that  of  a  vegetable  Venice.  In  the  cleared  spaces  stood  great 
clumps  of  that  superb  terrestrial  orchis,  the  Lissochilus  giganteus, 


THE  STORY  OF  MY  LIFE 


97 


with  flower  spikes  two  to  three  feet  long,  rising  six  to  ten  feet 
above  the  ground  level.  Farther  away  from  the  buildings  oil 
palms,  raphias  and  a  species  of  Phoenix  prefaced  the  dense  for- 
est beyond  the  water  channels. 

The  orchids  with  their  light-green,  spear-like  leaves,  their  tall, 
swaying  flower-stalks  grew  in  groups  of  forty  and  fifty  together, 
often  reflected  in  the  shallow  pools  of  stagnant  water  round  their 
bases  and  filling  up  the  foreground  of  the  high,  purple-green 
forest  with  a  blaze  of  peach-blossom  color — though  to  others 
among  the  Portuguese  settlers  on  the  river  bank — no  doubt  color- 
blind— these  blossoms  were  merely  "grass." 

On  the  banks  of  the  shaded  lagoons  were  tall  bushes  of  the 
Mussaenda  shrub  with  startling  white  velvet  bracts — leaves  of 
white  velvet — round  their  inconspicuous  yellow  flowers.  There 
were  also  pandanus  or  screw-pine;  oil  palms  with  an  extraordi- 
nary parasitic  growth  of  exqviisite  ferns  wreathing  their  trunks ; 
and  mangrove  trees  poised  on  their  many  feet  and  telling  out 
against  the  shining  sky  with  their  lace-like  tracery  of  leaves.  In 
these  quiet  stretches  of  still  water  were  the  feeding  grounds  of 
myriad  forms  of  life:  of  blue  land-crabs,  whose  burrows  riddled 
the  black  soil,  of  always  alert  and  agitated  walking-fish — the 
mud-fish  (Periophthalmus) — flapping  and  flopping  through  the 
ooze  and  climbing  the  lower  branches  of  the  water-side  trees;  of 
tiny  amethystine,  red-beaked  kingfishers;  of  kingfishers  that 
were  black-and-white,  or  large,  gray,  speckled,  and  chestnut 
brown;  of  white  egrets,  of  the  brown,  stork-like  Scopus  unihretta; 
of  spur-winged  geese  and  of  the  uncertainly-classified  "fishing 
vulture" — Gypohierax,  a  bird-of-prey  of  creamy-white  head, 
back,  front,  wing-coverts  and  tail,  and  black  pinions — possibly 
related  to  the  Haliaetus  sea-eagles. 

A  rustling  in  the  tree-leaves  and  a  six  feet  long  Varanus  lizard 
with  whip-like  tail  would  slip  from  the  branches  into  the  water; 
or  on  some  trampled  bank  a  crocodile  might  be  lying  asleep  in  the 
warm  sunshine,  with  a  fixed  smirk  hanging  about  his  grim 
muzzle.  These  lagoons  were  places  seething  with  life  that  was 
ever  stirring,  striving,  and  active;  and  if  one  arrived  suddenly, 


98 


THE  STORY  OF  MY  LIFE 


slipping  and  splashing  in  the  watery  footholds,  the  resulting 
silence  was  rather  the  frightened  expectant  hush  of  a  thousand 
apprehensive  creatures. 

Beyond  the  pools  of  water  rose  an  almost  impenetrable  barrier 
of  forest,  nearly  impossible  to  penetrate  by  land,  but  pierced  by 
many  little  arms  or  natural  canals  of  the  Congo  until  the  firm 
dry  land  behind  was  reached.  As  one  passed  in  a  native  canoe 
through  the  watery  alleys  of  this  vegetable  Venice — the  majestic 
trees  firmly  interlaced  above  and  overarching  the  creek,  shroud- 
ing all  in  pale  green  gloom — the  glimpses  and  vistas  through  the 
forest  revealed  many  beautiful  and  strange  forms  of  animal  life. 
Barbets  with  red  foreheads,  gray  heads,  blush-tinted  breasts  and 
underparts,  blackish-green  wings  and  back,  were  sitting  in  stupid 
meditation  on  the  twigs,  giving  a  harsh  mechanical  squeak  when 
the  near  approach  of  the  canoe  disturbed  their  reverie.  Little 
African  woodpeckers  were  creeping  up  the  branches,  deftly  turn- 
ing round  towards  the  unseen  side  when  they  observed  me ;  large 
green  mantises  or  "praying  insects"  were  chasing  flies  with  their 
great  pouncing  forelegs,  and  were  themselves  eyed  by  blue  roller 
birds  which  snapped  them  up  as  they  moved  and  threw  off  their 
resemblance  to  leaves  and  twigs. 

Farther  into  the  forest,  the  creek  stopped,  the  soil  became  solid 
and  dry,  a  native  path  was  discernible  leading  through  the  now 
more  park-like  and  formal  clumps  of  trees  to  a  distant  village, 
whence  came  the  crowing  of  cocks  and  the  occasional  shouts  of 
people.  But  the  birds  did  not  lessen  because  we  were  now 
approaching  the  abode  of  men.  Out  of  the  bosky  trees  little 
troops  of  black-and-white  hornbills  suddenly  started  and  flapped 
their  loose  irregular  flight  to  another  refuge.  Violet  plantain- 
eaters  gleamed  out  in  their  beauty  from  time  to  time;  golden 
cuckoos,  yellow- vented  bulbuls,  green  fruit  pigeons,  gray  parrots, 
parrots  that  were  gray  and  blue  and  yellow  shouldered,  green  love 
birds,  and  a  multitude  of  little  wax-bills;  a  medley  of  diverse 
birds  enlivened  this  walk  through  the  forest  along  the  black,  peat 
path.  In  the  village  which  I  thus  reached,  buried  in  the  forest  and 
as  yet  unharassed  by  European  ambitions,  there  were  many  indi- 


THE  STORY  OF  MY  LIFE 


99 


cations  of  the  neighboring  fauna  now  perchance  to  be  seen 
no  more.  These  riverine  natives  along  the  north  and  south 
banks  of  the  estuarine  Congo  found  it  a  profitable  employment 
in  those  days  to  capture  and  tame  all  kinds  of  mammal,  bird,  and 
reptile  which  they  then  brought  across  to  the  Dutch  and  English 
steamers,  or  to  the  merchants  at  Banana.  Here  in  this  village 
near  Kisanji  were  young  mandrills  with  their  little  leaden-blue 
faces  gazing  at  one  wistfully  from  the  doorway  of  some  native 
hut.  In  neatly  made,  wicker-work  cages,  constructed  from  the 
light  pithy  wood  of  the  baobab,  many  birds  were  awaiting  the 
departure  of  their  captors  for  Banana  and  the  Europe-bound 
steamer.  Here  was  a  green  parrot — some  species  of  the  large 
genus  Pceocephaliis — green,  with  a  few  red  splashes  on  the 
wings,  not  unlike — indeed  allied  to  the  Amazon  parrots  of  the 
West  Indies  and  South  America.  Numberless  little  "cordons- 
bleus,"  wax-bills,  and  weaver-birds  were  twittering  in  their  really 
pretty  cages.  A  poor  little  Galago  lemur  sat  huddled  and  stupid 
in  his  wicker  prison,  stunned  by  the  bright  daylight  to  which  he 
was  exposed.  ...  I  yielded  to  the  clamorous  natives  and 
bought  for  a  silver  shilling  a  cage  of  the  rare  red-fronted,  dawn- 
breasted  barbets  I  have  just  described.  They  did  not  remain  long 
alive,  but  I  skinned  them  and  sent  them  home  to  the  Zoological 
Society,  little  knowing  that  my  friend  Forbes  was  himself  already 
in  Africa  on  much  the  same  quests  as  mine. 

My  Congo  journey  lasted  some  eight  months.  It  has  already 
been  described  in  my  first  book.  The  River  Congo,'^  so  it  is  not 
necessary  to  repeat  its  text  here  at  any  length.  I  will  content 
myself  with  a  summary  and  with  other  statements  not  therein 
given. 

I  actually  forget  how  I  got  away  from  the  place  of  so  much 
beauty  and  interest — Kisanji.  I  think  my  Portuguese  host  sent 
a  man  out  in  a  canoe  to  attract  the  attention  of  a  small  steamer 
flying  the  British  flag  and  taking  house-building  material  up  to 
the  British  Baptist  Mission  at  Underbill  (near  Matadi).    But  I 

1  Published  by  Sampson  Low,  Rivington  &  Co.,  1884  and  republished 
in  1894. 


100 


THE  STORY  OF  MY  LIFE 


got  away  somehow,  in  some  "bottom"  over  which  the  Dutch 
House  had  no  control. 

We  called  among  other  places  at  Boma,  where  I  met  the  wife 
of  the  missionary  George  Grenfell.  She  was  a  very  remarkable 
woman,  a  West  Indian  Negress  (Miss  Edgerley)  who  had  come 
to  the  Cameroons  with  her  parents  and  brother  to  work  for  the 
Baptist  Missionary  Society,  Her  brother  was  long  afterwards 
a  builder  and  carpenter  at  Victoria,  Cameroons,  and  assisted  to 
put  up  my  Consulate  on  Mondole  Island.  The  Edgerleys  were 
a  remarkable  family.  They  were  well-educated  West  Indian 
Negroes,  but  probably  with  white  intermixture.  Miss  Edgerley 
taught  in  the  Saker  missionary  schools  on  the  Cameroons  River, 
and  after  the  death  of  the  first  Mrs.  Grenfell  in  1879  she  was 
married  by  the  missionary.  On  this  occasion  at  Boma  I  remem- 
ber how  well  she  talked  French  at  the  Dutch  House.  ( She  spoke 
also  Portuguese,  Ki-shi-kongo  and  Duala.) 

We  were  asked  up  to  dine  here  and  I  met  the  noteworthy 
Dutch  Agent  then  at  Boma,  Mr.  Greshofif.  He  was  a  remarkably 
handsome  man  of  very  good  education  and  courtly  manners.  He 
spoke  English  like  an  Englishman,  Portuguese  and  French  that 
seemed  to  be  faultless,  and  of  course  his  native  language  and  Ger- 
man. But  on  this  occasion  he  elected  that  French  should  be  the 
language  of  the  House  at  dinner;  I  suppose  because  of  the  inter- 
national standing  of  his  guests.  Whether  he  did  it  to  show  the 
linguistic  powers  of  Mrs.  Grenfell  or  to  place  her  at  a  disadvan- 
tage, I  can  not  say.  Towards  me  he  seemed,  under  a  veil  of 
smiles  and  compliments,  to  exhibit  so  much  enmity  for  having 
succeeded  in  ascending  the  river  so  far  that  I  clung  to  Mrs.  Gren- 
fell in  order  to  get  away  safely.  The  Dutch  at  that  juncture 
seemed  to  be  certain  Stanley  was  not  coming  back,  and  that  Ger- 
many and  Holland  would  get  a  joint  control  of  the  Upper  Congo. 

The  steamer  landed  me  at  Underbill  and  the  Baptist  Mission 
put  me  up.  I  was  warned  not  to  show  myself  at  Vivi  (then  the 
headquarters  of  the  Comite  d'Etudes  du  Haut  Congo)  or  I 
should  certainly  be  stopped  and  sent  back,  but  advised  if  I  wanted 
to  see  anything  of  the  Congo  of  the  Cataracts  to  travel  inland  by 


THE  STORY  OF  MY  LIFE 


101 


the  south  bank.  I  therefore  collected  a  few  porters  of  a  very 
unreliable  type  and  walked  about  forty  miles  into  the  cataract 
region.  The  rains  however  were  awful,  the  porters  were  timid 
and  sick,  and  the  natives  from  village  to  village  were  so  rapacious 
in  their  demands  that  I  paid  about  a  pound  a  mile  for  my  poor 
journey.  There  was  at  last  nothing  for  it  but  to  return  to  Under- 
bill and  give  up  my  project.  I  should  soon  have  no  more  than  a 
reserve  of  eighty  pounds  which  might  be  only  enough  money  to 
see  me  home  to  England. 

Two  days  after  my  return  to  Underbill  a  strange  rumor  from 
the  natives  filled  the  air:  "Bula  Matadi" — Stanley — was  return- 
ing! We  heard  this  story  at  our  early  breakfast.  Somewhere 
about  noon  a  small  steamer  was  seen  in  front  of  the  immense  cliff 
at  "Hell's  Gate,"  and  on  the  steamer — which  only  moved  at  the 
rate  of  about  two  miles  an  hour  against  the  swirling  current — I 
first  saw  Stanley;  in  a  large  helmet,  seated  on  a  chair  looking 
intently  towards  Vivi. 

Two  days  afterwards  I  resolved  to  stake  everything  on  a  bold 
chance.  I  had  my  letter  of  introduction  from  Augustus  Cohen. 
I  would  go  and  present  it,  and  if  Stanley  "turned  me  down,"  I 
would  take  the  next  British  steamer  to  the  sea  and  home.  Stan- 
ley, however,  seemed  to  have  had  some  letter  himself  from  the 
Consul  when  he  reached  Banana,  for  to  my  surprise  one  of  his 
steamers,  the  Belgique,  stopped  at  Underbill,  invited  me  to  come 
aboard  and  go  across  to  Vivi  to  see  the  great  man.  I  did  so,  and 
— as  related  in  my  book — my  difficulties  were  solved ;  for  though 
I  returned  to  Underbill  and  made  one  or  two  small  journeys  up 
the  river  on  that  side  it  was  with  the  understanding  of  returning 
to  Vivi  and  starting  for  the  Upper  River  at  the  beginning  of 
January,  1883. 

Stanley  enabled  me  to  go  as  far  as  Bolobo  on  the  Upper  River, 
two  or  three  hundred  miles  beyond  Stanley  Pool.  If  I  had  had 
the  time  to  wait  he  would  eventually  have  taken  me  on  with  him 
the  whole  course  of  the  uninterrupted  Congo,  as  far  as  Stanley 
Falls.  But  I  had  only  my  irreducible  reserve  of  £80  after  I  had 
given  the  well-earned  douceurs  to  the  three  Zanzibaris  he  had 


102 


THE  STORY  OF  MY  LIFE 


placed  with  me.  So  I  said  good  bye  to  him  at  Kinshasa  on  Stan- 
ley Pool  and  returned  to  England  via  Portuguese  West  Africa, 
carrying  with  me  letters  to  his  publishers  and  to  Edwin  Arnold 
of  the  Daily  Telegraph. 

I  deemed  it  best  to  go  south  at  first,  to  St.  Paul  de  Loanda,  to 
get  news  of  Lord  Mayo,  to  pick  up  any  luggage  I  might  have  left 
there,  with  Mr.  Cohen  the  British  Consul,  and  thence  to  embark 
in  what  was  then  an  excellent  line  of  Portuguese  steamers  plying 
between  Angola  and  Lisbon. 

My  journey  home  as  a  matter  of  fact  was  one  of  the  most 
interesting  voyages  I  ever  made.  It  is  many  many  years  since  I 
traveled  on  a  Portuguese  boat ;  they  may  have  degenerated :  I  can 
only  say  that  as  far  back  as  1883  they  were  reckoned  good  means 
of  travel  in  West  Africa.  The  food  was  far  better,  far  more 
nicely  cooked  and  served  than  in  the  English  vessels.  There  was 
a  Scottish  engineer:  otherwise  the  staff  was  Portuguese.  On 
this  particular  boat  (which  was  very  clean)  I  visited  first  the 
mouth  of  the  Congo — again;  then  the  unacknowledged  Portu- 
guese port  of  Cabinda,  north  of  the  Congo  (Portuguese  in 
1884)  ;  next  the  island  of  Sao  Thome  and  that  of  Principe;  then 
the  exceedingly  interesting  capital  of  Portuguese  Guinea  (Bo- 
lama)  ;  and  finally  the  Cape  Verde  Islands  and  Madeira  before  we 
landed  at  Lisbon  in  July,  1883. 

At  Sao  Thome  we  stayed  several  days,  and  I  rode  nearly  all 
over  the  island  with  a  Portuguese  doctor  who  had  special  charge 
of  the  laborers  in  the  quinine,  coffee  and  cacao  plantations.  He 
was  a  remarkable  man — I  have  ungratefully  forgotten  his  name 
(Sampayo?) — and  had  many  ideas  about  malarial  fever  and 
sleeping  sickness  that  seemed  in  advance  of  his  time.  Like  my- 
self, he  had  begun  to  associate  the  outbreak  of  malarial  fever 
with  mosquito  bites.  I  had  arrived  when  in  Congoland — and  I 
was  possibly  inspired  by  Comber  and  Bentley,  the  great  Baptist 
missionaries  who  put  many  ideas  into  my  head — at  the  conclu- 
sion that  mosquitos  had  something  to  do  with  the  introduction  of 
"malaria"  into  one's  system;  and  avoided  their  punctures  most 
sedulously.    Consequently  I  really  escaped  attacks  of  malaria  to 


THE  STORY  OF  MY  LIFE 


103 


a  remarkable  degree  during  these  first  sixteen  months  in  West 
Africa.  The  doctor  in  Sao  Thome  had  arrived  at  the  same  con- 
clusions. 

But  in  Sao  Thome  malarial  fever  was  a  secondary  considera- 
tion. The  problem  was  how  to  obtain  labor  not  merely  for  the 
experiment  of  planting  quinine — I  forget  whether  quinine  was 
any  success — but  for  the  cultivation  of  coffee,  sugar,  and  cacao. 
Cacao  was  just  at  the  beginning  of  its  amazing  success.  Orig- 
inally, of  course,  it  is  a  product  of  Tropical  Mexico,  Colombia, 
Venezuela  and  Trinidad.  It  was  introduced  into  the  West  Afri- 
can coast-lands  originally  by  the  despised,  never-sufficiently- 
appreciated  Baptist  missionaries,  who  dropped  pods — so  to  speak 
— at  the  Gold  Coast,  Fernando  Poo  and  the  Cameroons.  Some- 
how it  reached  Sao  Thome  in  the  'seventies  (or  earlier)  and  by 
1883  was  beginning  to  show  itself  a  great  success. 

This  equatorial  island  of  course  is  arch-beautiful,  idyllically  so. 
The  mountains  have  not  the  ten  thousand  feet  altitudes  of  Fer- 
nando Poo,  but  they  reach  to  between  six  and  seven  thousand  feet 
— the  whole  island  is  elevated — and  assume  the  quaintest  sugar- 
loaf  forms,  here  and  in  Principe.  In  Principe  they  are  less  lofty, 
but  they  are  stranger  even  in  shape,  unbelievably  so.  Both  islands 
are  volcanic.  Neither  had  any  indigenous  inhabitants  before  the 
Portuguese  discovered  them.  Their  Negro  peoples  are  derived 
from  slaves  landed  there  in  the  centuries  between  1500  and  1875. 
These  were  drawn  from  Dahome,  the  Niger  mouths,  Cameroons 
and  Congo.  The  Congo  element  has  prevailed  over  the  other 
non-Bantu  peoples,  and  I  believe  now  they  speak  several  lan- 
guages of  their  own,  derived  from  a  mixture  of  Portuguese, 
Ki-shi-kongo  and  Kakongo. 

From  about  1878,  from  the  dawn  of  cacao  success,  the  Portu- 
guese had  been  introducing  into  Sao  Thome  many  recruits  for 
labor  from  Angola  and  the  western  Congo.  I  dare  say  there  was 
pressure,  an  unfairness  over  this;  that  it  was  a  disguised  slave 
trade.  But  once  these  people  reached  Sao  Thome  I  can  aver  they 
were  well-treated,  though  I  dare  say — in  those  days — their  wages 
were  meager  and  their  chances  of  regaining  freedom  in  their  old 


104 


THE  STORY  OF  MY  LIFE 


home  very  slight.  The  initial  fact  was  that  originally  they  had 
been  prisoners  of  war  or  "criminals" — you  could  have  been  in 
those  days  a  "criminal"  in  native  Africa  without  having  done 
wrong  under  any  European  code — and  that  they  escaped  a  far 
worse  fate  in  coming  to  Sao  Thome. 

The  homes  made  by  the  Portuguese  at  four  and  five  thousand 
feet  were  delightful  and  in  1883  seemed  to  me  very  civilized.  In 
fact  among  the  young  women  it  was  /  that  was  the  barbarian,  the 
person  to  be  accounted  for!  Several  of  the  best-looking  were 
from  the  northern,  Oporto  part  of  Portugal  where  a  large  section 
of  the  people  is  of  Gothic  descent  (Swevian)  and  gifted  with 
golden  hair — "Louros,"  as  they  are  termed.  I  overheard  one  of 
these  saying  to  my  doctor-guide  that  she  preferred  that  I  be  not 
introduced,  as  probably  like  most  English  people  I  had  large  feet. 

But  the  men — many  of  them  also  fair  and  golden  haired — 
were  jolly,  and  rode  about  with  me  till  we  became  a  roving  party 
of  a  dozen  or  more  visiting  most  of  the  plantations. 

Principe  Island  struck  me  as  being  very  interesting  in  its  amaz- 
ing vegetation,  but  its  aspect  was  gloomy.  Nearly  all  the  old 
civilization,  attendant — shocking  to  relate — on  the  slave  trade, 
had  died  out.  One  saw  architectural  relics  of  palaces  and  villas 
half  shrouded  in  creepers  and  brilliant  displays  of  wild  flowers, 
and  half  hidden  by  umbrageous  trees.  I  noticed  markedly  the 
"gray"  parrots  of  Principe.  The  form  here — introduced  several 
hundred  years  ago  by  the  Portuguese,  it  is  said — has  changed  in 
aspect  and  become  the  dominant  bird  of  the  island,  so  numerous 
and  aggressive  that  they  drive  away  hawks  and  eagles.  They 
have  changed  in  color  to  a  dark,  almost  purplish  gray,  and  the 
scarlet  tail  has  become  a  crimson  purple. 

I  fancy  our  steamer  stopped  a  couple  of  miles  out  at  sea  oppo- 
site "Sao  Joao  d'Ajuda" — St.  John  of  Ajuda,  an  almost  legend- 
ary and  unreal  fort  built  by  the  Portuguese  on  the  Whydah 
(Hwida)  coast  of  Dahome.  At  that  time  interest  in  this  supposed 
relic  of  Portuguese  claims  had  been  enhanced,  as  the  Brazilians 
were  engaged  in  a  slave  trade  with  Dahome,  and  seemed  likely  to 
give  a  fillip  of  reality  to  Portuguese  assertions  that  Dahome  was 


THE  STORY  OF  MY  LIFE 


105 


under  Portuguese  protection.  Great  Britain,  I  believe,  espoused 
the  Portuguese  claims  in  an  Agreement  which  was  about  to  be  ne- 
gotiated. But  no  one  came  off  and  we  steamed  on  to  far-away 
Portuguese  Guinea.  This  was  a  most  interesting  and  mysterious 
district  which  I  much  wanted  to  see,  and  which  I  have  always 
regretted  not  having  thoroughly  explored  somewhere  about  that 
period  when  things  were  quiet,  and  wild  natives  had  not  begun 
to  repel  explorers.  Portuguese  Guinea  was  then,  as  it  is  now,  one 
of  the  least  known  parts  of  West  Africa.  It  consists  of  the 
low,  densely  forested  islands  and  estuaries  of  the  Rio  Grande  or 
Tomani,  known  also  in  its  broad  estuarine  course  as  the  Jeba.  To 
the  north  of  this  is  another  river,  the  Kasheo.  But  in  the  main 
the  country  is  the  basin  of  the  Rio  Grande  and  its  many  affluents, 
and  the  big  indentation  in  the  coast-line  caused  by  its  broad 
mouth  is  nearly  filled  with  the  large  and  small  islands  known  as 
the  Bisagos  archipelago.  The  northern  frontier  of  this  richly 
forested  district  lies  about  a  hundred  miles  south  of  British 
Gambia.  It  resembles  Liberia  a  little  in  being  the  refuge  of 
strange  and  remarkable  mammals  and  birds,  already  destroyed  or 
driven  out  of  the  contiguous  and  more  open  territories.  Not  only 
that,  but  it  contains  some  of  the  most  interesting  and  least  known 
of  the  Negro  peoples  of  Africa;  though  I  suspect  they  are  far 
more  civilized  now  than  they  were  at  the  time  of  my  visit  in  1883. 

In  those  days,  when  one  reached  the  capital,  Bolama,  a  rather 
nicely-built  town  with  red-tiled  houses  on  an  island  in  the  huge 
delta  of  the  Jeba  or  Rio  Grande,  one  saw  a  strange  medley  of 
people  coming  to  the  market.  There  were  very  light-skinned 
Fulas  in  voluminous  Moorish  costumes,  with  yellow  complexions 
and  long  ringlets  of  hair  depending  from  their  heads.  The  men 
were  nearly  always  good-looking;  the  women  a  little  more 
negroid,  but  very  delicately  built  with  pretty  hands  and  feet.  I 
suspect  I  have  never  seen  this  remarkable  type — the  Ful — of  such 
pure  strain  as  at  Bolama.  A  large  proportion  of  the  Nigerian 
Fulbe  are  so  much  mixed  with  Hausa  and  other  Negro  blood  that 
they  have  grown  bulky  and  coarse  of  build  and  their  skins  darker, 
their  facial  features  much  more  like  the  Negro  type,  and  their 


106 


THE  STORY  OF  MY  LIFE 


hair  more  woolly.  In  striking  contrast  to  these  abundantly  clad, 
light-skinned  Fula  were  the  naked  Negroes  of  the  coast  regions 
and  some  of  the  islands.  The  people  of  Orango  and  the  outer 
Bisago  Islands  were  more  sophisticated,  more  clothed;  but  the 
Semi-Bantu  tribes  (as  I  came  to  understand  they  were) — the 
Bola,  Shadal,  Pepel,  Manjako,  Pajade  and  Biafada — were  black- 
skinned  and  mostly  naked,  the  women  usually  quite  naked,  while 
the  men  attempted  no  concealment  of  the  sexual  parts  but  gaily 
decorated  them  with  little  colored  tapes  or  ribbons. 

But  they  were  quiet  and  well-conducted,  though  I  was  told  that 
in  their  own  land  to  the  northwest  the  Manjako  were  very  war- 
like and  averse  to  the  intrusion  of  Europeans.  Another  much- 
dreaded  people,  not  speaking  a  Semi-Bantu  tongue  (apparently) 
were  the  Balante,  on  the  Kasheo  River  in  the  north.  The  Balante 
were  given  a  very  bad  character  for  immorality  by  the  Portu- 
guese; and  strange  to  say  when  in  1915  I  encountered  represen- 
tatives of  this  tribe  in  France  (soldiers  serving  in  the  Senegalese 
regiments)  the  same  reputation  hung  about  them. 

Koelle,  the  great  missionary-linguist  of  Sierra  Leone  (after- 
wards a  parish  priest  in  Cambridgeshire)  had  published  his  stud- 
ies of  the  languages  of  Portuguese  Guinea  in  the  early  'fifties, 
which  was  how  I  came  to  guess  at  the  remarkable  interest  of  these 
singular,  naked,  coast  tribes.  The  sprucely  uniformed  soldiers 
whom  I  met  in  France  during  the  Great  War  told  me  their  fellow- 
countrymen  had  learned  in  later  times  to  adopt  a  more  conven- 
tional extent  of  clothing  than  tapes  and  ribbons.  This  region 
however  has  remained  very  little  known  to  the  present  day.  Here 
is  still  found  the  wonderful  Eland  with  gigantic  horns  and  of 
black  and  gold  color,  striped  with  white,  which  reappears  in  the 
Bahr-al-ghazal  district  of  the  Anglo-Egyptian  Sudan. 

From  Portuguese  Guinea  the  steamer  passed  on  to  the  Cape 
V erde  Islands,  an  archipelago  belonging  to  the  Portuguese  since 
the  fifteenth  century.  These  are  situated  between  15°  and  17°  of 
N.  Latitude,  about  five  to  six  hundred  miles  from  the  Senegal 
coast.  Our  steamer  only  stopped  at  the  much  frequented  Sao 
Vicente  Island,  south  of  the  larger,  more  fertile  Sant'  Antao, 


THE  STORY  OF  MY  LIFE 


107 


where  the  mountains  rise  to  a  height  of  over  seven  thousand  feet. 
As  we  journeyed  thither  through  the  archipelago  we  had  an  un- 
usually fine  view  of  the  occasionally  active  volcano  in  Fogo 
Island,  which  rises  to  an  altitude  of  over  ten  thousand  feet.  Ordi- 
narily there  is  a  good  deal  of  haze  about  the  islands,  but  in  this 
month  of  July  they  seemed  clear  and  easily  visible,  and  most  of 
them  had  high  mountains.  Ever  since  they  were  first  discovered 
nearly  five  hundred  years  ago  there  seems  to  have  been  a  slowly 
decreasing  rainfall.  Still,  in  1883  there  was  a  good  deal  of  vegeta- 
tion very  unevenly  distributed,  the  northern  versants  being  almost 
desert  and  the  southern  rich  in  tropical  cultivated  vegetation,  in 
date  palms,  coconut  palms,  tamarind  trees,  bananas  in  some  val- 
leys, a  good  deal  of  coffee  of  excellent  quality,  and  a  number  of 
introductions  from  Africa  and  the  Canary  Islands — such  as  the 
baobab,  dragon  tree  (Dracaena) — and  the  Australian  eucalyptus. 

The  largish  island  of  Sant'  Antao,  just  opposite  the  harbor  of 
Mindello  at  the  little  island  of  Sao  Vicente  (where  our  steamer 
anchored  for  a  couple  of  days),  rises  to  altitudes  of  over  seven 
thousand  feet  and  looks  imposing.  The  aspect  opposite  Sao 
Vicente  is  sterile  desert  in  appearance,  but  its  rocks  and  mountain 
slopes  are  of  striking  aspect  with  their  bold  coloration  of  black 
lava,  red  clay  and  creamy  white  pumice  stone.  On  the  sky-line 
heights  and  to  the  southwest  we  could  see  the  dark  or  light  green 
of  cultivations;  and  a  two  hours'  ride  on  donkeys  showed  the 
western  and  northern  slopes  which  were  really  rich  in  vegetable 
growth. 

The  town  of  Mindello  in  Sao  Vicente  was  an  important  station 
for  the  Brazilian  cable,  landed  here  from  Lisbon.  It  had  a  popu- 
lation of  very  mixed  characteristics — not  a  few  English — and  the 
English  language  was  everywhere  understood.  Its  shops  when 
we  landed  seemed  to  be  one  extensive  bazaar  of  Brazilian  oddi- 
ties. I  might  have  picked  up  cheaply  some  treasures  in  butterflies 
and  plants  had  I  possessed  the  money  to  spend.  But  my  remain- 
ing funds  were  to  be  carefully  economized  in  case  when  I  landed 
at  Lisbon  I  next  had  to  proceed  to  Brussels. 

This  proved  to  be  the  case.    The  steamer  was  boarded,  as 


108 


THE  STORY  OF  MY  LIFE 


soon  as  we  were  passed  by  the  health  authorities,  by  the  Lisbon 
correspondent  of  the  Standard,  who  asked  for  information 
about  the  state  of  the  Congo ;  and  there  was  a  telegraphic  enquiry 
from  the  private  secretary  of  King  Leopold  to  ask  whether  I 
was  on  board.  After  three  days'  rest  at  Lisbon  and  the  neces- 
sary purchase  of  new  clothes  I  traveled  direct  to  Brussels. 

I  was  met  at  the  station  by  Colonel  Strauch,  then  general 
manager  of  the  Comite  d'Etudes  du  Haut  Congo,  who  con- 
ducted me  to  rooms  he  had  engaged  for  me  at  whatever  was 
then  the  best  hotel  in  Brussels.  It  would  be  hopelessly  out  of 
date  now :  I  have  even  forgotten  its  name :  but  I  still  remember 
the  German  style  of  furniture,  the  lack  of  ventilation,  the  high 
beds  with  not  over-much  bedclothes  and  in  lieu  thereof  an 
irritating  featherbed  to  place  over  you;  and  furniture  covered 
with  scarlet  plush.  I  had  been  rather  seedy  after  landing  at 
Lisbon;  here  at  Brussels  I  began  to  feel  downright  ill.  Yet 
there  was  this  visit  hanging  over  me  which  I  could  not  forego. 
The  morning  after  my  arrival  I  was  met  at  ten  o'clock  by 
Colonel  Strauch  and  driven  out  to  the  palace  at  Laeken,  taken 
up  a  great  flight  of  stairs :  two  or  three  minutes'  delay  and  a 
whispered  conversation  between  Strauch  and  the  Count  Jean 
d'Oultremont,  and  I  was  ushered  into  a  library  where  I  saw 
an  extremely  tall  man  with  a  long  beard.    This  was  the  King. 

I  think  he  was  in  a  military  uniform.  He  rose  and  shook 
hands;  and  spoke  French  with  some  precision  so  that  not  a 
word  of  his  questions  was  lost.  For  an  hour  at  least  he 
cross-questioned  me  about  the  Congo,  occasionally  noting  down 
an  answer  in  an  extremely  angular  handwriting,  as  though  it 
were  written  with  a  fine  stick.  After  about  an  hour  had  passed 
my  indisposition  became  almost  unbearable,  so  at  length  I  rose 
and  stammered  out  that  I  had  an  attack  of  fever — would  he 
excuse  me?  Perhaps  allow  me  to  see  him  again  and  furnish 
more  information?  I  was  then  seized  with  such  a  pronounced 
shivering  attack  that  I  was  spared  further  explanation.  The 
King — I  must  say — was  curiously  kind  and  "human."  He  led 
me  into  the  ante-room,  touched  a  bell,  then  passed  with  me 


THE  STORY  OF  MY  LIFE 


109 


on  to  the  landing  of  the  great  staircase.  Here — for  it  was  July 
and  very  hot — was  an  open  window.  I  staggered  to  the  opening, 
leaned  over  the  sill  and  was  violently  sick.  The  King  stood 
by  me  and  seemed  to  be  saying  that  it  was  a  very  interesting 
example  of  what  malarial  fever  was  like.  Presently  Count  Jean 
d'Oultremont  was  talking  to  the  King — or  rather  being  told 
what  was  the  matter  with  me  and  how  I  was  to  be  seen  back 
to  the  hotel  and  put  to  bed,  and  Doctor  Some-body-or-other 
be  invited  to  examine  me.  Then  the  King  turned  to  me  and 
said  as  soon  as  I  was  well  I  must  come  and  see  him  in  Brussels 
and  finish  the  conversation. 

So  I  was  escorted  back  and  put  to  bed,  and  a  very  distinguished 
and  kindly  physician  presently  looked  in  and  prescribed  various 
medicines.  Two  days  afterwards  I  was  quite  well  and  was 
summoned  to  the  palace  at  Brussels  to  finish  my  account  of 
Stanley's  work  and  my  own  impressions  of  the  Upper  Congo. 
Then  we  went  to  lunch,  and  in  the  ante-room  I  was  introduced 
to  Sir  Frederick  Goldsmid,  Mr.  Delmar  Morgan,  and  a  third 
person,  who  I  learned  were  proceeding  to  the  Congo  on  a 
mission  from  the  King;  in  fact  Sir  Frederick  was — I  gathered — 
to  become  the  Governor  of  the  region :  an  announcement  which 
a  little  surprised  me  as  it  seemed  to  override  Stanley's  position. 

The  only  thing  I  remember  about  the  menu  of  the  lunch  was 
the  prominent  position  taken  in  the  dessert  by  Huntley  and 
Palmer's  mixed  biscuits.  The  whole  of  the  meal  of  course  was 
sans  reproche,  and  to  me,  fresh  from  the  poor  fare  of  West 
Africa,  seemed  doubly  delicious.  But  if  there  was  one  allevia- 
tion of  bad  diet  in  West  Africa  it  had  been  Huntley  and 
Palmer's  mixed  biscuits.  In  fact  the  Baptist  missionaries  and 
I  nearly  lived  on  them  for  a  week  at  Stanley  Pool,  when  there 
was  a  stoppage  of  other  supplies.  But  here  in  Brussels  (served, 
too,  on  wonderful  gold  plates  with  the  British  Royal  Arms, 
an  appanage  of  the  first  King  of  the  Belgians,  who  had  been 
the  husband  of  the  Princess  Royal)  they  were  singled  out  by 
the  King  for  special  notice  and  commendation.  The  English- 
men present  ate  them  with  simulated  enthusiasm  and  discrim- 


110 


THE  STORY  OF  MY  LIFE 


ination,  the  King  pointing  out  here  and  there  reasons  for  his 
commendation. 

I  left  Brussels  with  a  request  from  the  King  and  Colonel 
Strauch  to  interview  and  select  a  few  young  Englishmen  for 
service  in  the  Congo  regions;  this  and  other  things  that  I  heard 
encouraged  me  to  believe  that  Stanley's  projects  of  a  "British" 
Congo  interior  would  be  eventually  carried  out;  though  I  was 
puzzled  to  understand  why  the  King  of  the  Belgians  should  spend 
hundreds  of  thousands  of  pounds  on  such  a  quixotic  idea. 

In  the  early  autumn  which  followed  a  committee  appointed 
at  the  British  Association  meeting  offered  me  the  post  of  leader 
of  a  scientific  expedition  to  Mt.  Kilimanjaro.  The  principal 
mover  in  the  matter  was  Dr.  Sclater  of  the  Zoological  Society. 
I  had  known  him  since  I  was  fourteen  when  I  bought  from 
the  Society  a  pair  of  Vulpine  Phalangers.  He  used  to  ride  to 
the  Zoological  Gardens  from  Hanover  Square  on  an  old  hunting 
horse,  and  at  the  tender  age  mentioned,  just  after  I  had  received 
a  student's  card  of  free  entrance,  I  had  timorously  tackled  him 
and  asked  the  price  of  a  redundant  pair  of  these  furry  marsupials. 
Through  the  years  that  followed,  though  I  frequented  the  Zoo 
and  anatomized  in  the  Prosector's  rooms,  he  never  seemed  to 
recognize  me.  But  when  I  wrote  to  Forbes  from  the  Congo, 
he  had  the  sad  task  of  opening  my  letters  and  replying  to  them; 
and  then  commenced  a  long  friendship  which  lasted  down  to 
the  time  of  his  death,  just  before  the  Great  War.  When  I 
returned  from  the  Congo  and  Brussels  he  proposed,  together 
with  Professor  H.  Mosely,  to  recommend  me  for  this  Kiliman- 
jaro expedition  in  Equatorial  East  Africa.  It  was  to  be  jointly 
financed  by  the  Royal  Society  and  the  British  Association  for 
the  Advancement  of  Science. 

After  a  little  hesitancy  I  accepted,  especially  when  I  realized 
that  the  details  of  the  expedition  would  be  directed  by  Sir  John 
Kirk,  the  Agent  and  Consul  General  at  Zanzibar,  and  that  the 
journey  would  in  some  way  bring  me  under  the  cognizance  of 
the  Foreign  Office.   Ever  since  the  days  of  Tunis  I  had  gradually 


THE  STORY  OF  MY  LIFE 


111 


formed  a  wish  to  enter  the  Consular  Service,  especially  in  some 
part  of  Africa;  so  that  I  might  be  able  to  combine  Government 
work  providing  a  sufficient  salary  to  live  on  with  research  into 
African  fauna,  anthropology  and  languages.  Mr.  Cohen  at 
Loanda  had  strongly  advised  me  to  try  for  a  Consular  appoint- 
ment in  Africa,  especially  as  I  had  shown  myself  thoroughly 
acquainted  with  French  and  Portuguese  and  averred  that  in 
addition  I  could  speak  Spanish  and  Italian.  The  King  of  the 
Belgians  had  suggested  when  I  paid  a  short  visit  to  Brussels  in 
September,  1883,  that  I  might  draw  up  plans  for  a  journey  he 
would  finance  from  Stanley  Pool  to  the  Upper  Benue,  but  I 
thought  he  underestimated  the  cost,  and  preferred  the  project 
of  Kilimanjaro. 

Preparations  for  this  journey  as  anticipated  brought  me  into 
relations  with  the  Foreign  Office  in  the  autumn  of  1883. 

Sir  Charles  Dilke — though  I  think  he  had  already  been  trans- 
ferred to  the  Presidency  of  the  Board  of  Trade — was  much  at 
the  Foreign  Office  then,  and  particularly  interested  in  the  pro- 
jected Congo  Treaty  with  Portugal.  My  actual  introducer  to 
the  Foreign  Office  officials  was  Lord  Aberdare,  the  President 
of  the  Royal  Geographical  Society.  My  father  had  long  been 
a  member  of  that  society,  but  I  suppose  my  Congo  journey  on 
which  I  read  a  paper  in  the  autumn  of  1883,  was  my  real  pre- 
sentment to  Lord  Aberdare,  as  well  as  my  introduction  into  the 
fellowship  of  the  Society,  which  occurred  about  then.  But  our 
pleasantest  association  was  an  ability  to  talk  French,  not  so  com- 
mon a  feat  then,  among  geographers,  as  to-day.  The  occasion  of 
my  reading  a  paper  on  the  western  Congo  was  remarkable  for 
being  that  of  De  Lesseps's  first  appearance  at  the  Royal  Geogra- 
phical since  the  opening  of  the  Suez  Canal.  He  was  present 
on  the  platform  when  I  (with  inward  shakings)  delivered  my 
address;  and  he  spoke  afterwards  on  the  subject  of  the  Canal. 
I  thus  made  his  acquaintance  and  went  to  see  him  the  next 
day  in  Portland  Place  where  he  was  the  guest  of  an  English 
traveler  in  Egypt,  Mr.  T.  Douglas  Murray.^ 

^  T.  Douglas  Murray,  who  die^'  somewhere  about  igii,  was  an  exceedingly 


112 


THE  STORY  OF  MY  LIFE 


Lord  Aberdare's  letter  was  to  Austin  Lee,  at  that  time  a 
clerk  in  the  Foreign  Office  who  was  private  secretary  to  Lord 
(Edmund)  Fitzmaurice,  the  Parliamentary  Under  Secretary 
of  State  in  succession  to  Dilke.  But  in  one  afternoon  it  had 
served  as  a  means  of  getting  to  know  a  group  of  men  whom 
I  thought  remarkable  for  their  knowledge  of  many  things  and 
their  accomplishments  outside  Foreign  Office  affairs.  There  was 
T.  VilHers  Lister,  who  was  already  an  Under  Secretary;  H. 
Percy  Anderson,  head  of  the  new  African  Department;  Frank 
Bertie — afterwards  Lord  Bertie  of  Thame,  Ambassador  at  Paris 
through  the  War;  Sir  Edward  Hertslet  the  great  librarian;  Sir 
Francis  Alston  the  Chief  Clerk;  and  Henry  Austin  Lee  already 
referred  to. 

Lister  was  a  cousin  of  the  Lord  Ribblesdale  of  the  period. 
He  was  a  tall  and  singularly  handsome  man  who  had  entered 
the  Foreign  Office  about  1853,  and  had  been  sent  as  somebody's 
private  secretary  to  the  Paris  conferences  following  on  the 
Crimean  War  .  .  .  where  being  very  good-looking  he  was 
called  "L'Ange  de  la  Paix."  Sir  William  Harcourt  had  married 
en  premieres  noces  his  sister — if  I  remember  things  correctly — 
and  his  mother  (Lady  Theresa  Lister,  afterwards  Lady  Theresa 
Cornewall-Lewis)  had  been  a  sister  of  the  Lord  Clarendon  who 
was  Foreign  Affairs  Secretary  for  long  periods  in  the  'fifties  and 
'sixties  down  to  his  death  in  1870. 

Lister  married  twice;  for  the  second  time  in  1877,  the  sister 
of  Lord  Belhaven,  and  had  a  family  in  all  of  some  twelve 
children,  five,  I  think,  by  his  first  wife.  Lady  Lister,  the  second 
wife,  was  one  of  the  most  delightful  women  I  ever  knew;  a 
great  musician,  a  perfect  step-mother  (I  should  think),  an 
excellent  manager  in  every  way;  a  good  linquist  in  foreign 
tongues,  even  a  good  bicyclist  and  an  expert  player  of  ever  so 
many  games.    She  was  so  good,  so  kind  that  she  deserved  to 

pleasant  man  interested  in  many  things,  and  the  author  of  several  books 
about  them :  Jeanne  d'  Arc,  Psychology,  Sir  Samuel  Baker  and  the  Sudan, 
De  Lesscps,  and  South  Africa.  Our  friendship  lasted  from  this  first 
luncheon  party  in  November,  1883,  till  the  end  of  his  life.  He  had  curious 
adventures  in  Egypt  over  a  mummy  which  resulted  in  the  loss  of  his  right 
hand. 


Abo've:  A  sketch  portrait  of  Alfred 
Henrj-  Garrod  by  Sir  Hubert  von 
Herkomer,  R.A. 

Beloiv:  A  portrait  of  Sir  Percy 
Anderson,  K.C.B.,  K.C.M.G. 


Above:  Sir  John  Kirk,  G.C.M.G., 
K.C.B.     (Photo  by  Elliott  &  Fry). 

Beloiu:   Sir  Edwin  Arnold,  K.C.S.I. 


THE  STORY  OF  MY  LIFE 


113 


live  for  ever ;  as  indeed  might  be  said  of  her  husband.  But  soon 
after  his  retirement  from  the  Foreign  Office  at  the  end  of  the 
last  century,  he — an  accomplished  painter  whose  work  was  good 
enough  for  professional  exhibitions — went  suddenly  blind  and 
died  in  1902;  and  she,  still  in  the  prime  of  life,  died  a  year 
or  two  afterwards :  one  of  those  losses,  in  her  case — he  of 
course  was  about  seventy — which  have  closed  my  mind  against 
any  belief  in  an  intelligent  and  sympathetic  Providence. 

Henry  Percy  Anderson  in  1883  had  also  married  a  second 
time:  the  widow  of  the  fifth  Lord  Boston,  my  wife's  mother. 
He  himself  was  the  son  of  the  Reverend  Robert  Anderson  of 
Brighton,  who  had  married  a  daughter  of  Lord  Teignmouth. 

He  had  entered  the  Foreign  Office  in  1852,  and  had  been 
much  in  the  United  States  during  the  Civil  War.  Not  long 
before  my  acquaintance  with  him  at  the  Foreign  Office  he  had 
been  placed  in  charge  of  the  new  African  Department,  which 
about  1882  had  grown  out  of  an  older  section  of  the  Office, 
the  "Slave  Trade"  Department,  in  existence  probably  from  the 
'thirties  of  the  last  century.  Anderson  had  had  two  children 
by  his  first  wife — Florence  and  Rowland. 

Frank  Bertie — "the  Honble.  Francis  Leveson"  he  was  fully 
styled — was  a  jolly,  bluff,  hunting-man;  rather  good  looking, 
very  kind-hearted,  supposed  to  use  "frightful"  language  when 
annoyed ;  but  in  reality  he  was  very  seldom  really  upset  and  his 
oaths  and  adjectives  were  only  employed  for  effect  and  very 
pleasantly  interjected.  He  had  married  a  daughter  of  the  Lord 
Cowley  vv^ho  was  Ambassador  at  Paris  down  to  June,  1867. 
He  came  in  course  of  time  (after  Percy  Anderson's  death)  to 
take  charge  of  African  affairs  at  the  Foreign  Office,  but  I 
probably  knew  him  best  during  the  long  term  of  his  service  as 
Ambassador  at  Paris,  down  to  the  year  of  his  retirement  at 
the  close  of  the  War. 

Sir  Edward  Hertslet  was  the  great  Librarian  who  reigned  so 
long  at  the  Foreign  Office,  and  succeeded  E.  Norris  (who  was 
one  of  the  early  students  of  African  languages).  Hertslet,  I 
should  think,  had  never  made  an  enemy.    He  was  not  only 


114  THE  STORY  OF  MY  LIFE 

very  clever  but  very  benign,  and  performed  a  really  great  work 
in  bringing  order  and  method  into  our  cataloguing  of  treaties. 
He  took  up  the  subject  of  the  history  of  the  political  Map  of 
Africa  and  published  two  volumes  thereanent  which  I  am  lucky 
enough  still  to  possess.  (The  second  volume  was,  I  think, 
"recalled"  in  the  'nineties  to  have  a  published  treaty  amended 
and  generally  to  be  a  little  altered  to  please  a  dictatorial  German 
Emperor;  but  I,  in  Africa,  overlooked  the  despatch  recalling  the 
first  version.) 

Sir  Francis  Alston  was  the  Chief  Clerk.  He  had  filled  that 
position  (which  controls  the  finances  of  the  Foreign  Office)  for 
many  years — since  1866, 1  believe.  He  had  married  the  daughter 
of  the  British  Consul  at  Copenhagen  (Bridges  Taylor),  and  his 
wife  and  her  sisters  had  grown  up  companions  of  Queen  Alexan- 
dra. He  was  a  tall,  handsome  man  in  1883,  of  great  kindliness.  I 
dined  at  their  house  in  Eccleston  Square  in  the  winter  of  that 
year  and  there  for  the  first  time  met  my  future  mother-in-law, 
Lady  Boston. 

Henry  Austin  Lee,  who  survived  the  War  and  a  time  of 
strenuous  anxiety  all  through  the  War  at  the  Embassy  in  Paris 
was  in  1883  a  lithe,  rather  good-looking  young  man  of  great 
brilliance.  He  was  the  son  of  a  former  postmaster-general  in 
Ceylon,  and  had  distinguished  himself  very  much  at  Oxford, 
and  entered  the  Foreign  Office  in  1870.  In  1883  he  had  become 
Private  Secretary  to  Lord  Edmond  Fitzmaurice.  .  .  . 

There  were  of  course  numerous  other  personalities  of  moment 
to  a  trembling  outsider  in  this  autumn-winter  of  1883:  there 
was  Thomas  (afterwards  Lord)  Sanderson,  who  in  those  days 
was  Private  Secretary  to  Earl  Granville;  there  was  Clement 
Hill,  Chief  Clerk  in  the  African  Department,  a  distant  cousin  of 
Percy  Anderson;  Philip  Currie,  destined  soon  after  1883  to 
succeed  Sir  Julian  Pauncefote  as  Principal  Under  Secretary  of 
State.  I  was  dimly  aware  of  their  existence  at  that  time  but 
did  not  come  to  know  them  till  a  few  years  later. 

Though  my  introduction  to  Austin  Lee  was  ostensibly  given 
in  order  that  I  might  prepare  myself  for  the  Kilimanjaro  Expe- 
dition and  the  acquaintance  with  Sir  John  Kirk,  my  coming  to 


THE  STORY  OF  MY  LIFE 


115 


the  Foreign  Office  in  November,  1883,  was  deemed  particularly 
opportune  in  view  of  the  negotiations  which  were  going  on  with 
Portugal  relative  to  a  possible  Treaty  settling  many  disputed 
points  and  policies  in  Africa,  and  the  endeavor  to  meet  and 
prepare  for  settlement  the  new  problems  raised  by  Stanley's 
work  on  the  Congo.  There  were  the  French  ambitions  in  that 
direction;  and  the  puzzling  interest  displayed  in  the  Congo 
Question  by  the  King  of  the  Belgians.  The  ambitions  of  France 
were  obviously  antagonistic  to  British  interests  in  Africa — then. 
Our  entry  into  Egypt  and  the  French  withdrawal;  Gambetta's 
death;  had  all  served  to  make  French  policy  in  Africa  profoundly 
anti-British.  The  King  of  the  Belgians  was  a  new  factor.  What 
did  he  want?  Why  was  he  spending  thousands  and  thousands 
of  pounds  on  the  Inner  Congo  ?  Stanley  had  been  born  a  British 
subject,  and  the  truculence  of  his  youth  against  his  mother 
country  had  obviously  abated.  He  had  proved  himself  extremely 
kind  to  me  and  had  sent  me  several  letters  to  be  communicated 
to  the  Foreign  Office.  I  certainly  derived  the  impression  from 
our  intercourse  that  Stanley  intended  the  Inner  Congo  Basin  to 
come  under  British  Protection.  What  role  in  this  respect  he 
mentally  assigned  to  King  Leopold,  I  can  not  say. 

The  Foreign  Office,  however,  had  decided  in  view  of  French 
empietements  to  come  to  terms  with  Portugal,  recognize  Portu- 
guese domain  as  extending  up  to  the  south  bank  of  the  Lower 
Congo  and  inland  as  far  as  Noki  (near  Matadi),  and  obtain  in 
general  for  the  Congo  Basin  a  kind  of  British  supervision  and 
control.  Sir  Charles  Dilke  therefore  in  this  autumn  of  1883 
was  devising  a  Treaty  with  Portugal  which  proposed  to  settle 
a  I' amiable  all  matters  of  dissidence  between  that  country  and 
Great  Britain.  A  subsidiary  arrangement  negotiated  by  Sir 
Robert  Morier  was  to  lead  to  the  purchase  by  Great  Britain  of 
Delagoa  Bay;  the  Portuguese  claim  to  extend  from  Angola  to 
the  southern  bank  of  the  Congo  was  to  be  admitted ;  Portuguese 
rights  to  the  coast  of  Dahome  were  to  be  recognized;  on  the 
other  hand  Nyasaland  was  not  to  come  under  Portuguese 
suzerainty;  and  the  Congo  Basin  was  to  be  controlled  jointly 
by  Great  Britain  and  Portugal.    Given  all  the  circumstances  of 


116 


THE  STORY  OF  MY  LIFE 


the  case  this  arrangement  seemed  to  me — then — the  best  solution 
of  a  grave  difficulty.  It  would,  when  carried  out,  have  installed 
Great  Britain  as  the  shaper  of  the  destinies  of  Congoland.  But 
though  the  Treaty  was  signed,  it  was  rejected  by  the  House  of 
Commons  at  the  instigation  of  an  ignorant  man — Jacob  Bright — 
mainly  on  the  plea  that  Portugal  was  a  Roman  Catholic  Power ! 
Jacob  Bright  seemed  to  overlook  the  fact  that  Leopold  ii.,  for 
whose  interests  he  fought,  was  rather  more  Catholic  than  the 
very  easy-going  monarch  of  Portugal  or  any  Portuguese  minister 
likely  to  arise  to  power. 

My  main  mission  to  Kilimanjaro  was  to  study  the  fauna  and 
flora  of  the  mountain.  It  was  for  that  purpose  that  a  thousand 
pounds  was  jointly  subscribed  by  the  British  Association  and  the 
Royal  Society.  The  sympathies  and  co-operation  of  the  Royal 
Geographical  Society  were,  however,  desired,  and  to  gain  these 
it  was  necessary  that  I  should  be  trained  sufficiently  in  surveying 
and  the  fixing  of  latitudes  and  longitudes.  These  were  directions 
in  which  I  never  showed  any  natural  interest  or  aptitude. 

The  Foreign  Office  deigned  to  display  considerable  interest 
in  the  projected  journey,  but  that  was  purely  for  political  pur- 
poses. It  was  to  be  under  the  direction  of  Sir  John  Kirk,  the 
British  Agent  and  Consul  General  at  Zanzibar,  and  it  seemed 
to  be  assumed  by  the  African  Department  at  the  Foreign  Office, 
several  months  before  my  departure,  that  the  expedition  could 
be  deflected  to  political  purposes,  should  there  be  an  increase  in 
the  mysterious  "scientific"  expeditions  which  both  France  and 
Germany  were  beginning  to  send  or  to  cause  to  go  to  East 
Africa :  France  on  the  Somaliland  coast,  south  of  Cape  Guard- 
afui ;  and  Germany  from  the  latitude  of  Lamu  down  to  the 
Ruvuma  River. 

To  enlist  therefore  the  sympathy  of  the  Royal  Geographical 
Society,  whose  secretary  in  those  days  was  the  remarkable  Henry 
Walter  Bates,  I  had  not  only  to  show  myself  competent  to 
describe  a  new  country,  but  to  place  it  on  the  map  by  observa- 
tions of  latitude  and  longitude.  The  teacher  of  these  arts  at 
the  old  headquarters  of  the  Society  in  Savile  Row  was  Mr.  John 


THE  STORY  OF  MY  LIFE 


117 


Coles,  formerly  a  Naval  Officer  and  a  great  traveler.  Coles 
charged  me  next  to  nothing  for  his  tuition;  but  he  wished  me 
to  be  thorough;  not  merely  to  get  a  latitude  within  a  mile  and 
a  longitude  within  five  miles,  but  further  to  do  terribly  accurate 
things  with  a  theodolite.  He  lived  on  the  outskirts  of  Mitcham ; 
in  1883-4,  almost  the  country. 

Evening  after  evening,  afternoon  after  afternoon  I  spent  with 
him,  and  with  the  sun,  stars  and  moon.  I  took  observations  for 
half  an  hour  of  the  moon  to  result  in  a  "lunar"  fixing  of  Mit- 
cham; the  outcome  of  which  was  quite  creditable,  for  the  posi- 
tion of  Mitcham  was  placed  at  a  mile  or  two  east  of  Woolwich. 
Another  time  by  the  same  means  I  showed  Mitcham  to  be  near 
Windsor.  All  this,  I  contended,  was  sufficient  for  East  African 
purposes;  and  so — with  a  sigh — Coles  gave  me  the  requisite 
amount  of  support  to  obtain  my  instruments  at  the  cost  of  the 
Royal  Geographical  Society.  .  .  .  Six  months  afterwards 
I  thought  of  Mitcham  Common  when  I  was  trying  with  the 
theodolite  to  fix  the  position  of  my  first  camp  outside  the  forest 
zone  on  Kilimanjaro. 

(Just  as  I  had  everything  set  up,  screwed  tight,  in  place, 
adjusted,  leveled,  and  ready  for  observation  to  take  latitude 
and  longitude  of  the  sun,  a  horde  of  Kibosho  savages — enemies 
of  the  Moshi  people  who  were  my  hosts — raised  their  heads 
and  spears  above  the  bushes  of  heather.  They  were  so  transfixed 
with  astonishment  at  the  sight  of  the  theodolite  that  they  hesi- 
tated to  advance  or  fight.  I,  therefore — my  followers  having 
fled  or  hidden  themselves — had  to  take  this  delicate  instrument 
to  pieces  avoiding  jams  and  obstructions,  get  the  containing  box 
to  lock,  and  withdraw  into  the  concealing  forest  as  if  unconscious 
of  the  observation  of  the  possible  foe.) 

The  theodolite  was  ultimately  returned  unharmed  to  Savile 
Row;  but  one  way  and  another  these  divagations  from  natural 
history  collecting  and  anthropology  in  the  direction  of  geogra- 
phical survey  were  not  worth  the  efforts,  the  anxieties,  the 
journeys  they  cost.  I  had  become  far  too  much  interested  in 
the  political  future  of  Equatorial  East  Africa. 


CHAPTER  VI 


But  I  nearly  missed  going  to  East  Africa  after  all.  The  slight 
contract  I  obtained  with  Lord  Granville  at  the  Foreign  Office 
in  the  early  winter  of  1883,  put  into  his  head  the  idea  that  I 
might  be  more  useful  at  that  time  in  Egypt.  I  spoke  French 
and  Italian  and  I  had  a  fair  knowledge  of  Arabic.  He  suggested, 
therefore,  through  an  Under  Secretary,  that  I  might  expedite 
my  departure  and  spend  a  month  or  two  in  Egypt  on  my  way 
to  Zanzibar;  take  despatches  out  to  Sir  Evelyn  Baring  and 
present  him  with  a  letter  of  introduction  from  Lord  Granville. 
If  he  chose  to  retain  me  in  any  capacity  I  could  remain  in  Egypt, 
Sir  John  Kirk  could  be  communicated  with  and  might  defer 
the  leadership  of  the  Kilimanjaro  Expedition  to  a  young  Naval 
Officer  whom  he  had  already  made  a  Vice  Consul  and  who 
subsequently  rose  high  in  the  Consular  service. 

Accordingly  the  morning  I  reached  Cairo  I  conveyed  the  bag 
of  despatches  and  the  introductory  letter  to  the  British  Agency, 
and  into  the  dread  presence  (as  it  had  already  grown  to  be 
considered)  of  Sir  Evelyn  Baring.  He  glanced  up  at  me  angrily, 
after  reading  Lord  Granville's  note :  "Well !  What  brings  you 
here?"  was  the  abrupt  query. 

"Well :  I  was  told  at  the  Foreign  Office  to  deliver  to  you 
this  bag  of  despatches  and  this  letter — and — and — await  your 
decision — I  mean,  not  go  on  to  East  Africa  if  you  wanted  me 
to  remain  here  .   .   .    and  .   .   .  and  ..." 

"Oh,  well,  that's  soon  settled.  Go  on  to  East  Africa,  by  all 
means.  It's  nothing  to  do  with  me.  The  Foreign  Office  is  con- 
stantly sending  out  young  men  like  you,  saying  they  know 
Arabic  Here,  Gerry  !" 

A  grave-looking  young  man  came  from  an  inner  room. 

"Open  this  bag  and  see  what  it  contains.  ..." 

118 


THE  STORY  OF  MY  LIFE 


119 


Mr.  Gerald  Portal  took  over  the  bag,  eyed  me  rather  seriously, 
and  walked  out.  I  rose  to  my  feet  and  said  tremblingly  in  a 
voice  I  endeavored  to  render  calm  and  level :  "Then  I  needn't 
take  up  your  time  any  longer?" 

"No.    Good  morning." 

I  retreated  to  Shepheard's  Hotel,  mortified — as  perhaps  I  had 
never  been  before  in  my  brief  experience  of  the  world.  At  the 
Foreign  Office  every  one  had  been  so  kind,  on  the  most  perfunc- 
tory introduction ;  and  after  all  I  had  never  asked  to  be  sent  to 
Egypt:  the  idea  of  stopping  there  for  a  while  had  been  very 
naturally  suggested.  However,  after  passing  a  very  dreary  after- 
noon I  went  out  about  tea-time  and  presented  one  of  my  letters 
of  introduction.  It  was  from  H.  W.  Bates  of  the  Geographical 
(from  1883  till  the  time  of  his  death  in  1892,  one  of  my  kindest 
friends)  to  Ernest  Ayscough  Floyer,  Postmaster  General  in 
the  service  of  the  Khedive's  Government.  Floyer  had  his  eldest 
sister  keeping  house  for  him.  He  was  a  distant  cousin  of  Sir 
Percy  Anderson  at  the  Foreign  Office,  and  had  already  spent  a 
very  interesting  time  in  Baluchistan  over  telegraphy.^  Since  the 
British  intervention  in  1882 — if  not  before — he  had  been  in 
Egypt,  reorganizing  the  postal  service  and  the  telegraph  lines. 
To  some  people,  very  grumpy,  he  was  to  me  most  sympathetic. 
He  laughed  over  my  description  of  my  vivid  five  minutes  with 
Sir  Evelyn  Baring — afterwards  Lord  Cromer.  "You  made  a 
most  unfortunate  mistake,"  he  said,  "in  mentioning  Arabic  " 

"I  didn't;  I  hadn't  the  chance  to  " 

"Well:  your  Foreign  Office  introducer,  then.  Baring  came 
here  from  India — though  he  has  been  in  Egypt  before.  He 
speaks  French  well,  and  takes  a  great  interest  in  Modern  Greek. 
But  for  some  reason  he  hates  Arabic,  or  else  he  can  not  learn 
it.  .  .  ." 

Floyer  himself  was  all  the  other  way.  He  had  (he  told  me)  a 
fair  knowledge  of  Persian  and  Hindustani,  and  knew  something 
of  Baluchi  and  of  the  curious  Dravidic  language  of  Brahui  which 

^  See  his  Unexplored  Baluchistan — a  remarkable  book,  quite  unappreciated 
at  the  time. 


120 


THE  STORY  OF  MY  LIFE 


lingers — inexplicably — in  Baluchistan;  and  he  certainly  knew 
Arabic  in  several  dialects,  knew  it  exceptionally  well.  He  was 
too  important  a  person  to  be  roughly  treated,  had  himself  too 
violent  a  temper.  His  sister  became  a  warm  friend  of  the 
Cromers.  Floyer  remained  in  Egypt  till  he  reached  a  pension- 
able age,  long  after  1884;  having  married  happily  and  settled 
down. 

My  month  in  Egypt  despite  this  inauspicious  commencement 
was  happily  and  usefully  spent.  I  accompanied  Ernest  Floyer  on 
journeys  of  great  interest  up  the  Nile  as  far  as  Assiut ;  about  the 
Pyramids ;  and  all  over  the  Delta,  as  far  as  the  outskirts  of  Alex- 
andria; Rosetta^  at  one  of  the  main  Nile  mouths;  Damietta  at 
the  other;  Tanta,  Tifte,  and  Zagazig.  We  arrived  at  Assiut  at  a 
very  troublous  time,  when  the  first  Gordon  search  expedition 
was  preparing.   The  city  of  Assiut  was  not  then  occupied  by  the 

1  Rosetta — an  Italian  version  of  Rashid  or  Rashit,  the  Arab  and  Coptic 
names — was  a  place  I  longed  to  explore,  but  when  we  ventured  within 
it  in  March,  1884,  local  opinion  was  still  hostile;  so  Floyer  decided  to 
cross  the  Nile  and  pitch  his  camp  by  the  river  bank  farther  north,  nearer 
to  the  outlet  of  the  great  river  into  the  Mediterranean.  The  next  day  we 
rode  along  the  banks  so  that  we  might  see  the  Nile  by  the  western  of  its 
two  principal  mouths  enter  the  Mediterranean.  "Who  knows !"  said  Floyer. 
"This  time  next  year  you  may  be  looking  at  the  Nile's  source?  .  .  .  the 
Victoria  Nyanza?" 

But  the  return  to  our  camp  furnished  an  amusing  and  intriguing  incident. 
A  tall,  handsome  friar  was  standing  watching  the  operations  of  the  cook 
preparing  a  dinner.  Floyer  tackled  the  sandalled  man,  clad  in  Capuchin's 
habit,  with  bare  tonsured  head.  He  spoke  to  him  in  French — no  result — 
in  Arabic — he  only  looked  up  and  smiled.  "Here,  you  tackle  this  chap," 
he  said.  "He  may  come  from  a  monastery  for  the  deaf-and-dumb,  short 
of  which  he  ought  to  understand  French  or  Arabic." 

I  tried  him  in  Italian — only  part  success :  he  replied  in  an  old-fashioned 
Spanish — or  so  I  took  it  to  be.  "Hay  muchos  mosquitos  aqui  ?"  I  asked 
as  an  experiment — for  we  had  no  mosquito  nets.  .  .  .  He  looked  grave, 
pondered,  cast  his  eyes  across  the  river  and  replied  in  his  Castilian :  "There 
were  two;  but  the  English  destroyed  one  by  their  fire  when  they  were 
here."  I  translated  this  answer  to  Floyer,  who  said  "mosquito"  didn't 
perhaps  mean  "mosquito"  in  Spanish,  and  that  the  poor  man  had  thought 
I  meant  "mezquita" — "Mosque" ;  but  that  it  was  funny,  all  the  same,  that 
there  should  seemingly  be  a  monastery  for  wild  Spanish  monks  near  the 
western  mouth  of  the  Nile,  and  that  as  the  man  apparently  would  not  go 
we  had  better  ask  him  to  stay  to  dinner.  This  we  did.  He  poured  forth 
a  long  story  to  me  in  Spanish  of  Salonica  (seemingly — where  the  Spanish 
Jews  still  speak  it  with  a  sixteenth-century  pronunciation)  ;  but  I  understood 
very  little  of  it. 


THE  STORY  OF  MY  LIFE 


121 


British  forces,  which  were  camped  about  six  miles  distant.  Floy- 
er's  special  train  entered  the  station  and  left  us  behind  in  his 
traveling  carriage  of  three  compartments ;  kitchen,  sitting-room, 
and  two-berthed  bedroom.  As  soon  as  the  engine  had  steamed 
out  of  the  station,  back  to  some  more  important  railway  center, 
a  disorderly  cohort  of  townspeople  and  desert  Bedawi  forced  its 
way  into  the  station  and  surrounded  the  carriage.  Floyer  spoke 
conciliatingly  from  a  window,  but  fragments  of  wood  were 
hurled  at  him.  His  face  was  struck  by  splinters  and  began  tc 
bleed.  Suddenly  at  this  crisis  a  hush — not  of  our  imposing — fell 
on  the  attackers.  They  turned  their  heads  toward  the  opening 
of  the  lines.  Then  we  heard  the  sound  of  galloping.  The  crowd 
silently  stole  away  b}^  the  gates  they  had  forced  and  presently 
there  came  galloping  along  the  intervals  between  the  two  lines 
of  rails  about  a  hundred  Hussars  or  some  other  light  cavalry. 
Somehow  news  of  our  dilemma  had  reached  the  British  camp, 
and  we  were  rescued  just  in  time;  for  our  besiegers  had  been 
bringing  up  firewood  to  surround  our  railway  carriage  and  smoke 
us  into  surrender.  That  day  began  the  British  occupation  of 
Assiiit  and  on  the  morrow  I  recognized  some  of  our  attackers 
among  the  men  and  boys  who  came  to  sell  us  oranges. 

My  stay  in  Egypt  fortunately  enabled  me  to  compose  two  Sup- 
plements for  the  Graphic  on  Egypt  as  I  saw  it  in  1884 — the  ram- 
shackle, picturesque  villages  with  their  pigeonries,  their  potteries, 
their  groups  of  palms  and  mud-brick  houses,  their  naked  children 
and  masked  women.  I  drew  an  abandoned,  Sleeping-Beauty 
palace  of  the  Khedive's,  hidden  in  giant  rose  thickets  near  a  quiet 
canal  half  way  between  Alexandria  and  Cairo;  I  sketched  the 
Nile  near  Rosetta,  within  sound  of  the  Mediterranean  breakers; 
the  domestic  buffaloes  in  the  mud  and  water  and  bestridden  on 
the  grassland  by  lithe,  naked  boys;  the  beautiful  mosques;  the 
crowded  streets  of  Cairo,  the  black-and-gray  hooded  crows,  the 
rather  squalid,  mid-nineteenth  century  watering-place  of  Ramleh 
on  the  coast,  near  Alexandria. 

(I  should  like  at  this  point  to  express  the  gratitude  I  owe  to 
the  management  of  the  Graphic  by  the  Thomas  family,  W.  L. 


122 


THE  STORY  OF  MY  LIFE 


Thomas  and  his  sons,  especially  Carmichael  Thomas.  He  and  I 
were  in  a  sense  Art  students  together — at  any  rate  we  became 
acquainted  in  that  way,  and  through  knowing  him  I  came  to  know 
his  father,  Wilham  L.  Thomas,  who  founded  the  Graphic  in  the 
'sixties.  The  Graphic  pubHshed  drawings  of  mine  illustrating 
Tunis  in  1880  and  1881.  When  I  returned  from  the  Congo  they 
paid  me  a  considerable  sum  for  my  Congo  sketches ;  their  pay- 
ments for  what  I  did  in  Egypt  materially  increased  my  reserve  of 
money  for  East  African  exploration.  And  so  it  went  on  through- 
out all  my  days  of  exploration  till  I  settled  down  in  Sussex  and 
drew  and  photographed  no  more.  William  Thomas,  the  "father" 
of  the  Graphic,  died  at  the  very  beginning  of  the  twentieth  cen- 
tury; his  eldest  son  grew  in  course  of  time  white-haired,  and 
retired  from  Graphic  management  to  the  highest  part  of  Kent, 
buried  in  birch  and  oak  and  chestnut  woods,  the  world  forget- 
ting— perhaps — but  I  hope  not  forgotten  by  those  people  still  in 
the  world  of  care  and  anxiety  whom  he  had  so  steadily  and 
quietly  helped.  The  Graphic  was  far  more  provocative  of  Afri- 
can exploration  than  it  probably  ever  quite  realized.  For  if  I 
wished  to  raise  a  modest  fund  for  some  adventurous  journey,  for 
the  expenses  attendant  on  the  ascent  of  some  unknown  mountain, 
the  search  for  some  reported  tribe  of  special  interest,  the  dis- 
covery of  a  medicine  plant,  of  an  Okapi,  a  sun-bird  of  rapturous 
beauty,  a  monkey  of  extravagant  tail,  a  language  of  far-reaching 
affinities,  I  had  but  to  appeal  to  William  or  Carmichael  Thomas 
and  the  thing  was  done.  I  only  hope  they  derived  sufficient  profit 
from  the  reproduction  of  my  drawings  and  the  publication  of  my 
special  "Supplements.") 

From  Upper  Egypt  I  made  my  way  rapidly  in  Floyer's  train 
to  Cairo,  and  with  little  pause,  northward  of  Cairo,  into  the 
broadening  Delta.  He  had  done  his  work  for  the  time  being  on 
the  narrow  Nile  Valley  about  Assiut,  to  prepare  for  the  enlarged 
postal  facilities  required  by  Lord  Wolseley's  Army  which  was 
proceeding,  with  some  vacillation,  toward  the  relief  of  Gordon. 
Now,  for  a  couple  of  weeks,  he  had  to  range  west  and  east  across 
the  Delta  and  down  to  the  sea  at  Rosetta  to  enquire  into  this  and 


THE  STORY  OF  MY  LIFE 


123 


that,  and — amongst  other  things — open  up  postal  communica- 
tions with  Gaza  (which  I  found  was  pronounced  to-day,  Fazzeh) 
on  the  Palestine  frontier. 

Somewhere  on  the  western  side  of  the  Delta  near  the  Mah- 
mudieh  (?)  Canal  he  took  me  to  see  a  deserted  summer  palace 
of  the  deposed  Khedive  Ismail,  a  personage  whom  I  had  recently- 
met  in  London.^  Some  few  hundred  yards  away  from  the  bank 
of  a  canal  or  a  branch  of  the  Nile  there  were  great  dilapidated 
barracks  falling  into  ruin.  They  had  once  served  for  the  housing 
of  a  Khedive's  Guard,  but  were  now  only  tenanted  by  a  few  gen- 
darmes, who  were  lying  in  the  shade  smoking  cigarettes.  The 
deserted  palace  was  separated  from  the  barracks  by  palings  and 
a  row  of  palms.  It  was  an  unwieldy  pile  of  stuccoed  stories,  built 
I  should  think  by  a  French  architect,  whose  idea  of  Saracenic 
architecture  was  founded  on  some  cafe  chantant  of  Marseilles. 
But  behind  the  palace  was  a  magnificent  garden  with  peach  and 
almond  trees  in  full  blossom — soft  clouds  of  pink  and  blush-tint 
against  the  somber  background  of  dark  foliage.  Thither,  tempted 
by  anticipations  of  cool  shade  and  flower  fragrance,  we  directed 
our  steps,  to  be  met  by  an  obsequious  Copt  gardener  who  had 
been  sitting  with  a  few  friends  under  the  vines  and  fig-trees. 
With  some  fear  of  having  to  render  an  account  of  his  steward- 

1  My  father  as  an  Insurance  Office  Secretary  had  taken  some  part  in 
the  appointment  of  Captain  (Sir  Eyre  Massey)  Shaw  as  Head  of  the 
London  Fire  Brigade.  We  were  great  friends  and  in  addition  I  was 
sometimes  useful  to  him  on  Sunday  afternoons,  when  foreign  visitors  came 
to  inspect  his  fire  engines  or  to  be  taken  on  wild  rides  round  London  when 
fire  alarms  were  sounded.  On  one  such  occasion  in  the  autumn  of  1883, 
he  was  advised  after  lunch  in  some  imperfect  fashion  that  three  Egyptian 
princes  wished  to  see  him  and  were  on  their  way  to  Southwark  from  their 
hotel.  No  indication  was  given  that  this  message  meant  the  coming  of  the 
ex-Khedive  Ismail  and  two  companions.  Being  called  elsewhere  for  the 
time  he  asked  me  to  stay  on  and  show  the  Egyptians  round  the  Fire 
Brigade  headquarters.  I  did  so,  and  only  when  we  went  in  to  take  a  cup 
of  tea  with  Mrs.  Shaw  and  her  daughters  did  I  realize  that  for  an  hour 
I  had  been  talking  to  Ismail,  the  recently  retired  Khedive.  He  had  seemed 
to  me  a  witty,  singularly  well-informed  person. 

Mrs. — afterwards  Lady — Shaw  was  a  Portuguese,  I  think  from  Madeira. 
She  and  her  daughters,  as  well  as  Captain  Shaw,  all  spoke  French  with 
ease;  so  that  these  Sunday  afternoons  at  the  Southwark  headquarters  were 
pleasant  occasions  rarely  missed  by  foreign  visitors  to  London  interested 
in  the  methods  of  fire  extinction. 


124 


THE  STORY  OF  MY  LIFE 


ship  to  one  or  other  of  the  intruders  he  looked  alternately  at  each 
to  detect  who  spoke  with  authority.  He  soon  decided  it  was 
Floyer.  My  Arabic  of  Tunis  was  almost  too  foreign  in  pronun- 
ciation and  filled  with  words  special  to  North  Africa,  so  that 
apart  from  other  considerations  I  did  not  often  uplift  my  voice 
on  these  journeys  through  Lower  Egypt.  Floyer  knew  Egyptian 
Arabic  remarkably  well,  and  was  in  a  position  to  speak  with 
authority.  .   .  . 

The  Copt  returned  to  his  dwelling  and  fetched  a  huge  bunch 
of  keys.  The  shabby  gateway  to  the  inner  court  of  the  palace 
was  still  surmounted  by  a  tattered  device  in  Norwegian  timber 
for  a  fire-work  display.  How  long  had  it  been  there?  It  must 
have  been  six  or  seven  or  even  more  years  since  Ismail  was  in  a 
position  to  exhibit  fire-works,  even  in  simulated  rejoicing.  The 
palace  steps  were  already  in  ruin,  some  of  the  stones  having  been 
pilfered.  We  stood  in  front  of  a  mean  and  warped  wooden  door, 
ill  fitting  the  doorway,  its  planks  cracked  and  bowed,  and  need- 
ing but  a  slight  push  to  give  way  and  admit  you.  But  its  huge 
padlock  was  ceremoniously  unlocked  by  the  gardener,  and  a  boy 
who  had  followed  him  squeezed  through  and  dragged  it  open 
from  the  inside.  • 

Then  we  were  in  a  spacious  hall  with  tall  mirrors  set  in  frames 
of  tarnished  gold,  and  bearing  still  on  them  the  pasted  label  of 
their  maker's  name  and  address  at  Marseilles.  The  stone-paved 
floor  was  covered  with  immense  French  carpets  of  grandiose 
design — leviathan  roses  and  lilies.  Round  this  hall  were  divans 
covered  with  chintzes  to  match  the  carpets.  A  fine  staircase  of 
bold  design  ascended  from  the  farther  end  of  the  room  and  led 
one  to  a  series  of  apartments,  ample,  spacious  and  lofty,  with 
high  ceilings  and  many  windows.  These  rooms  were  not  ill 
designed  as  regards  shape,  but  as  usual  their  decorations  were 
in  the  worst  possible  taste.  The  carpets,  divans,  curtains  were 
rapidly  perishing  under  the  attacks  of  moths  and  damp;  the  roof 
being  partly  in  disrepair  and  the  late  winter  having  been  a  rainy 
one  the  timbers  were  rotting.  The  palace  probably  soon  solved 
the  difficulties  attending  its  upkeep  by  falling  to  pieces  and  add- 


THE  STORY  OF  MY  LIFE 


125 


ing  another  modern  ruin  to  the  many  reHcs  of  an  immeasurable 
past. 

A  more  pleasing  spectacle  was  the  beautiful  garden  attached. 
Left  to  itself  for  several  years,  free  from  pruning-knife  and 
scythe,  the  alleys  had  become  nearly  shut  out  from  the  sky 
beneath  a  maze  of  interlacing  boughs,  and  were  choked  up  with 
high  grass.  But  there  were  fairy  forests  of  peach  and  apricot 
trees,  of  almonds,  cherries,  plums,  filling  the  garden  with  the 
mingled  odors  of  their  blossom.  There  were  hedges  of  gerani- 
ums all  a  blaze  of  scarlet,  hibiscus  trees  with  deep  crimson  flow- 
ers— and  roses!  Roses  to  any  extent,  not  wonderful  in  indi- 
vidual quality,  but  in  such  profuse  quantity  that  the  eye  lit  on 
them  at  every  turn.  Groves  of  black-green  palms  dominated  the 
alleys  of  the  garden,  and  here  and  there  a  gloomy  cypress  or  a 
shady  ilex  tree  gave  depth  and  solemnity  to  a  quiet  nook. 

In  the  center  of  the  garden  stood  a  huge  and  tasteless  kiosque 
under  which  was  a  marble  fountain  with  sculptured  eagles  ready 
to  discharge  thin  shoots  of  water  from  their  beaks.  This  kiosque 
had  it  been  less  tawdry,  might  have  served  in  fancy  for  some 
enchanted  dwelling  sunk  in  slumber,  for  we  had  to  fight  our 
way  to  it  through  rose-tangles  and  briars ;  and  here  on  arriving 
by  the  last  gleams  of  the  sinking  sun,  we  seemed  to  distinguish 
figures  of  beautiful  damsels  sunk  in  sleep,  the  attendants  on  some 
central  Galatea  who  stood  in  petrified  wonder  above  the  eagles 
on  the  fountain.  Alas !  Looked  at  closer  they  were  realized  as 
only  the  commonplace  marble  hour  is  made-to-order,  to  hold  gas 
lamps — as  these  did — or  to  fill  up  halls  and  landings  in  Conti- 
nental hotels.  .   .  . 

Laden  with  all  the  flowers  we  could  carry,  and  followed  by  the 
gardener  bearing  more,  we  returned  to  our  tent  and  passed  a  cosy 
evening  there,  only  moderately  disturbed  by  the  fleas,  and  by  the 
dogs  which  had  sallied  out  from  the  town  to  harass  us  to  the 
best  of  their  ability.  Tired  with  the  day's  ride,  and  sprinkled  all 
over  with  insect  powder,  we  lay  down  to  rest,  too  sleepy  at  first 
to  be  agitated  by  either  plague,  though  both  fleas  and  dogs  in 
Egypt  are  potent  for  ill.    The  fleas  in  those  days — I  can  not  say 


126 


THE  STORY  OF  MY  LIFE 


what  they  are  Hke  now — simply  swarmed  in  the  soil,  no  matter 
whether  you  were  far  removed  from  a  city  or  not;  while  the 
pariah  dogs  ^  would  not  have  been  true  to  their  race  had  they 
not  bayed  at  every  stranger's  presence  from  dusk  to  dawn. 

In  an  irritable  or  nervous  mood,  an  Egyptian  dog  had  the 
power  to  make  one  cruelly  suffer.  Let  us  suppose — in  those  dis- 
tant days  of  1884 — that  one  was  camped  near  an  Egyptian  town 
in  the  Delta.  In  this  vmtidy  assemblage  of  brick  and  clay  build- 
ings, the  dogs  had  done  their  usual  barking,  yapping,  howling, 
boo-hoo-hooing  which  commenced  after  sunset,  and  were  dis- 
posed to  slink  ofif  toward  midnight  and  occupy  themselves  with 
a  quiet  prowl.  But  one  evil-minded  dog  has  spotted  your  en- 
campment, resented  the  intrusion  of  the  foreign  Christian,  and 
determined  to  rekindle  the  quiescent  anger  of  his  comrades.  So 
the  brief  lull,  the  ultimate  silence  we  might  have  hoped  for  would 
be  suddenly  broken  by  a  hideous,  tempestuous  volley  of  barks, 
delivered  with  such  furious  impetuosity  that  they  became  merged 
at  the  end  into  a  prolonged  howl.  This  outburst  would  then  recall 
his  retreating  companions,  who  at  first  might  be  indisposed  to 
join  in  the  attack,  being  more  inclined  to  forage  for  a  supper. 
But  this  zealot  of  a  dog  would  go  on  continuously  yapping  though 
his  voice  grew  faint  and  shrill  with  exhaustion,  till  at  length  he 
rekindled  the  sullen  animosity  of  his  friends.  They  would  then 
reassemble  and  prowl  round  our  tent,  giving  assent  to  all  he  put 
forward  in  his  indictment,  with  low,  muttered  growls.  Then 

^  I  made  some  notes  at  this  time  about  the  two  types  of  domestic  dog 
in  Egypt.  They  were  fairly  dissimilar  in  character  and  appearance.  The 
common  kind  was  the  well-known  pariah  dog,  yellow  in  color,  prick-eared, 
and  dingo-  and  jackal-like.  But  there  was  also  a  larger  type  of  dog  used 
as  a  house  guard  and  as  a  shepherd  dog.  It  looked  like  a  black  wolf  and 
was  very  fierce  in  disposition,  seldom  barking,  but  biting  ferociously — I  was 
told — when  its  suspicions  were  aroused.  Except  for  its  dark  color  it 
resembled  the  white  Berber  dogs  of  Tunis.  This  wolf-like,  sometimes 
"Chow-like,"  type  of  domestic  dog,  so  usual  in  northern  and  central  Europe 
and  in  temperate  Asia  and  pristine  North  America  is  only  found  in  North 
Africa  and  Egypt,  though  possibly  it  may  penetrate  elsewhere  into  the  high 
mountains  of  Abyssinia.  There  are  rumors  of  its  having  penetrated  through 
the  Tuaregs  into  the  northern  limits  of  the  Niger  Basin,  but  they  have  not 
been  verified.  Elsewhere,  in  primitive  Africa,  south  of  Egyptian  influence, 
the  dog  is  always  of  the  Asiatic  pariah,  dingo  type. 


THE  STORY  OF  MY  LIFE 


127 


one  or  two  of  the  most  moved  among  them  joined  the  accuser 
and  their  fresh  voices  lent  strength  to  his ;  and  encouraged  by  the 
growing  sympathy  of  pubHc  feehng  the  first  dog  declaimed 
against  us  with  renewed  vigor. 

At  last  the  whole  assembly  was  stirred  and  a  deafening  clamor 
broke  out.  some  of  the  female  dogs  becoming  hysterical  and  ris- 
ing in  shrill  and  dolorous  boohoos  above  the  gruffer  bass  of  the 
sterner  sex,  while  all  the  time  the  first  dog's  steady  barking  rose 
triumphant  above  the  general  chorus,  shrieking  out  our  crimes  in 
a  transport  of  maddened  fury,  delighted  to  find  he  had  roused 
public  opinion.  There  would  be  a  glad  tone  of  "I  told  you  so! 
— I  told  you  so !"  ringing  through  his  deafening  barks.  At  such 
a  juncture  I  would  rise,  and  seizing  anything  hard,  portable  and 
not  too  valuable  in  the  tent,  would  emerge  into  the  darkness  and 
fling  the  things  I  held  where  the  chorus  of  barks  was  'thickest. 
But  my  sortie  would  be  futile.  The  curs  that  a  minute  before 
were  close  to  the  tent  disappeared  into  the  gloom.  I  would  return 
to  bed,  only  to  be  followed  up  to  the  tent-ropes  by  a  renewed  out- 
burst from  the  now  thoroughly-in-earnest  dogs,  who  finding  their 
worst  suspicions  of  us  confirmed  laid  on  with  their  tongues  till 
day  broke. 

But  for  the  dog  nuisance  we  would  have  camped  out  more  fre- 
quently at  this  season.  As  it  was,  I  preferred  sleeping  in  some 
dwelling,  however  stuffy  and  smelly.  Fleas  were  not  worse  in 
the  houses  than  on  the  ground,  anywhere  near  a  village. 

On  my  return  to  Cairo,  before  setting  out  for  Suez  to  catch  the 
steamer  going  to  Aden,  I  made  the  acquaintance  of  Dean  Butcher 
who  had  been  for  a  year  or  two  the  senior  representative  of  the 
Anglican  Church  in  Cairo,  the  virtual  "Bishop"  of  Cairo — as  he 
may  have  lived  long  enough  to  become.  He  was  a  person  well 
worth  knowing,  one  of  the  most  witty,  discerning,  clever  people 
I  have  met.  He  had  been  Dean  of  Shanghai  (was  it  not? — or 
Hong  Kong?),  and  had  met  with  great  domestic  trouble.  His 
young  wife  had  eloped  with  a  military  officer;  and  after  a  year 
or  two  of  hesitancy — perhaps  quite  a  number  of  years — or  maybe. 


128 


THE  STORY  OF  MY  LIFE 


with  no  long  delay,  he  had  divorced  her.  This  action  had  drawn 
down  on  him  the  animadversion  of  a  narrow-minded  section  of 
the  Anglican  Church;  though  what  else  he  could  have  done, 
assuming  him  to  have  had  human  feelings,  it  is  difficult  to  see. 
He  had  been  transferred  to  Cairo,  where  he  became  one  of  the 
most  successful  features  of  the  British  occupation.  He — and 
his  second  wife,  for  when  his  divorce  was  settled  he  eventually- 
married  Miss  Floyer — devoted  themselves  much  to  the  study  of 
Coptic  and  to  the  encouragement  of  friendly  relations  between 
the  Anglican  and  the  Coptic  Churches.  I  hope  they  had  some 
gratitude  from  the  leaders  of  the  latter.  The  Coptic  Church  in 
Egypt  in  1884 — as  in  Abyssinia — was  smothered  in  superstition 
and  was  virtually  a  foreign  religion  to  us.  The  Copts  generally 
made  common  cause  with  the  Muhammadans  in  resenting  our 
attempts  to  set  Egypt  right.  Whether  the  action  of  the  Butchers, 
carried  on  through  many  years,  had  any  effect  on  the  Coptic 
mind,  I  can  not  say. 

On  my  return  from  Upper  Egypt  I  was  presented  to  the 
Khedive  Taufik  by  Mr.  Egerton,  afterwards  British  Envoy  at 
Athens.  The  Khedive  was  a  pleasant-looking  man,  half  Arab 
and  not  much  resembling  his  particularly  European-looking 
father,  Ismail,  who  without  a  fez  might  almost  have  passed  for 
an  Englishman  or  an  Austrian.  Taufik — why  did  we  persist 
throughout  his  life  in  misspelling  his  name  "Tewfik"? — spoke 
French  well  and  English  not  badly.  He  seemed  to  me  to  say 
witty  and  discerning  things,  but  to  have  become  in  1884  (I  saw 
him  again  on  the  verge  of  1885)  incurably  sad. 

All  the  heavy  luggage  of  my  expedition  had  been  handed  over 
to  the  British  India  Steam  Navigation  Company  in  London  to  be 
eventually  despatched  by  changing  steamers  to  Zanzibar;  and  I 
had  left  for  Egypt  by  the  overland  Brindisi  route  to  Alexandria 
at  the  beginning  of  March.  I  joined  the  steamer  conveying  my 
expedition  outfit  at  Suez  a  month  after  leaving  England,  and 
voyaged  to  Aden.  Here  we  had  again  to  change  in  order  to  finish 
the  journey  to  Zanzibar  by  a  small  but  comfortable  steamer  which 
in  those  days  plied  between  Bombay,  Aden,  Zanzibar,  and  Mo- 


riiotv  hij  Elliott  <£•  /■;■;/ 

Above:   T.  Douglas  Murray. 

Belouu:  Sir  Alfred  Sharpe,  K.C.M.G., 
C.B. 


rhntn  by  Elliott  <t-  Fry. 

Above:  Georg  Schweinf urth,  the 
great  German  explorer  of  the  Nile- 
Congo  water-parting. 

Belo^iv:  Sir  Clement  Lloyd  Hill, 
formerly    of    the     Foreign  Office. 


THE  STORY  OF  MY  LIFE 


129 


qambique.  There  was  no  hotel  at  Aden,  in  those  distant  years, 
suited  to  the  requirements  of  any  person  in  the  least  fastidious 
about  fleas  or  smells.  Every  one  anxious  on  these  points  who 
was  likely  to  be  detained  here  either  procured  a  letter  of  intro- 
duction to  the  "Governor"  (strictly-speaking  the  Resident),  or 
the  Steamer  Company's  Agent,  or  some  officer  of  high  com- 
mand ;  or,  braving  the  conventions,  called  on  some  suitably-housed 
officer  and  craved  hospitality.  I  dare  say  I  had  got  a  letter  to  the 
Resident.  At  any  rate  I  record  gratefully  in  my  book  on  Kili- 
manjaro "the  most  enjoyable  interval  spent  at  Aden  as  the  guest 
of  General  Blair"  .   .   .  whilst  awaiting  the  Zanzibar  steamer. 

At  Aden  I  obtained  through  Messrs.  Kawasji  Dinshah,  the  all- 
supplying  Parsi  agents,  a  useful  servant  for  my  Kilimanjaro 
journey,  a  young  Tamil  man  from  Ceylon  named  David  Virapan. 
He  was  one  of  the  many  Tamil  Roman  Catholics  and  had  a  good 
knowledge  of  English,  knew  som.e  French,  and  soon  came  to 
speak  Ki-swahili  (the  universal  East  African  language).  This 
Parsi  firm — is  it  running  still? — transacted  business  for  me  for 
some  twelve  years.  They  were  a  providence  to  Englishmen  in 
the  East,  and  only  had  one  fault:  they  spelled  their  name  as  it 
would  have  been  written  a  hundred  years  ago.  I  have  remedied 
that  by  rendering  it  here  phonetically,  as  it  was  pronounced. 

I  had  heard  much  about  Aden  in  1883  from  one  of  the  most 
remarkable  of  its  citizens :  Duala,^  the  Somali  servant  of  Stanley 
whom  I  had  known  on  the  Congo  in  1882  and  1883.  Duala  was 
a  typically  adventurous  Somal,  the  son  of  a  petty  official  at  Aden. 
When  a  boy  of  sixteen  he  had  gone  on  a  voyage  to  America  and 
then  in  some  such  year  as  1879  had  enlisted  for  service  on  the 
Congo  by  Stanley.  I  met  him  first  in  1882  at  Vivi.  He  seemed 
to  me  one  of  the  best-looking,  most  capable  black  men  I  had  met ; 
dark,  indeed,  he  was  in  complexion,  but  as  is  the  case  with  most 
Somalis  his  facial  features  were  almost  Greek.    His  hair  was 

1  His  name  is  ridiculously  misspelt  "Qualla"  by  the  lady  who  translated 
Count  Teleki's  Travels  into  English.  This  has  misled  several  African 
travelers  from  following  the  history  of  a  really  remarkable  Somal,  who 
for  what  he  achieved  during  six  years  with  Stanley  deserves  some  mention 
in  the  history  of  modem  Africa. 


130 


THE  STORY  OF  MY  LIFE 


close  cut,  but  that  of  the  uncivihzed  Somal  is  long,  fleecy,  and 
crinkly;  yet  they  and  the  Galas  are  surely  one  of  the  world's 
handsome  races,  though  the  men  are  better  looking  than  the 
women?  I  had  wanted  very  much,  if  I  ever  went  to  East  Africa, 
to  secure  Duala's  services  as  headman  of  my  expedition;  but 
by  a  series  of  mischances  whenever  I  arrived  at  Aden  he  was 
already  secured  by  some  other  expedition.  After  leaving  Stan- 
ley's service  in  1885  he  accompanied  the  James  brothers  into 
Inner  Sonialiland,  and  next  went  with  Count  Samuel  Teleki  on 
his  sporting  expedition  into  Equatorial  East  Africa  during  1886- 
1888.  Later  on  he  thought  to  undertake  a  trading  venture  of 
his  own  into  British  Somaliland  and  was  miserably  drowned  in 
the  wreckage  of  his  dau  off  the  Somaliland  coast.  He  spoke  per- 
fectly English,  Arabic,  Hindustani,  Swahili,  and  French;  and 
knew  also  Portuguese  and  Ki-kongo. 

The  story  of  my  Kilimanjaro  Expedition  and  some  prelimi- 
nary account  of  Sir  John  Kirk  and  of  the  Zanzibar  he  lived  in 
and  had  done  much  to  create,  is  told  in  my  book  published  at  the 
beginning  of  1886  when  I  was  away  in  the  Niger  Delta. ^ 

The  expedition  turned  out  to  be  beset  with  difficulties.  The 
interior  country  at  the  back  of  the  Swahili  belt  had  been  ravaged 
by  a  terrible  famine.  We  encountered  famished  men  who  crept 
after  the  lions  on  their  raids,  too  contemptibly  skinny  themselves 
to  be  worth  a  lion's  attention ;  and  who,  when  the  carnivore  had 
glutted  himself  with  the  viscera  and  choicest  muscles  of  the  dead 
antelope  or  buffalo,  were  permitted  to  sneak  up  to  the  mangled 
remains  and  eat  raw  what  fragments  of  meat  they  could  tear 
away.  The  sun-seared  country  seemed  almost  uninhabited  till 
we  reached  the  hills  of  Taita  or  the  snug  forest  retreat  of  Taveita. 

But  soon  after  I  had  settled  down  to  my  collecting  in  the 
Moshi  country  between  four  and  five  thousand  feet  in  altitude, 
occupying  the  central  part  of  the  Chaga  slopes  of  Kilimanjaro, 
I  had  trouble  with  my  principal  collectors,  two  Swahilis  whom 
Sir  John  Kirk  had  engaged  for  me.  They  were  good  shots, 
clever  taxidermists,  but  not  what  I  wanted  in  the  way  of  collec- 

^  The  Kilimanjaro  Expedition.  London,  i886,  Kegan  Paul,  Trench,  and  Co, 


THE  STORY  OF  MY  LIFE 


131 


tors.  They  considered  all  I  required  was  a  good  show  of  the 
larger  game  in  the  lower-lying  country.  Any  idea  of  ascending 
above  my  Moshi  station  of  Kitimbiriu  (now,  in  the  present  age, 
the  center  of  a  large  town  called  generically  "Moshi")  to  collect 
plants,  beetles,  butterflies,  birds,  or  rodents  they  esteemed  as 
beneath  their  notice  or  liable  to  lead  them  into  dangerous  places 
amid  hostile  natives.  I  found  that  in  accepting  the  invitation  of 
Mandara,  the  very  wide-awake  potentate  of  the  Moshi  tribe,  Sir 
John  Kirk  had  perhaps  taken  an  unwise  step.  Why  previous 
explorers  of  Kilimanjaro,  from  the  days  of  Von  der  Decken, 
had  all  made  for  Mandara's  headquarters  as  their  starting  point 
in  ascending  Kilimanjaro,  I  could  hardly  understand,  after  I 
came  to  know  Mandara.  He  was  an  elderly,  one-eyed,  astute 
chieftain  of  the  central  section  of  the  Chaga  peoples.  The  rest 
of  the  large  Chaga  tribe  inhabited  the  southern  slopes  of  the 
mighty  mass  of  Kilimanjaro,  from  Rombo  or  Useri  on  the  east 
to  Kibonoto  on  the  northwest.  The  northern  slopes  of  the  two 
volcanoes  were  nearly  waterless,  barren  and  uninhabitable.  Man- 
dara's country  probably  commanded  the  easiest  climbing 
approach  to  the  elevated  plateau  of  sixteen  thousand  feet  in  alti- 
tude, from  which  arose  the  snow-crowned  heights;  but  Mandara 
had  broken  the  heart  and  stopped  the  explorations  of  the  Rever- 
end Charles  New  (two  expeditions — 1871-1873),  and  he  had  not 
been  particularly  helpful  to  Joseph  Thomson.  I  found  after  three 
months'  delay  and  some  wasted  time,  that  the  Maranu  country  on 
the  southeast  offered  an  easier  route  to  the  snow  peaks.  When  my 
two  collectors  refused  to  ascend  the  mountain  higher  than  the 
vicinity  of  my  first  station,  or  unless  I  went  with  them  every  time 
to  "protect"  them,  I  discharged  them,  sent  them  back  to  Zanzibar 
and  trained  other  men  to  assist  me  in  collecting  and  preserving 
specimens. 

It  was  the  fauna  and  flora  of  the  mountain  I  had  come  to 
collect  first  and  foremost :  the  things  found  there  between  five 
thousand  and  fifteen  thousand  feet.  In  a  way,  this  was  sometimes 
exasperating  to  myself,  as  well  as  to  my  men;  for  the  big  game 
of  the  plains  was  obviously  far  more  attractive  to  the  eye  and  as 


132 


THE  STORY  OF  MY  LIFE 


articles  of  food  than  the  conies,  squirrels,  mice,  dormice,  shrews, 
genets  and  monkeys ;  the  sun-birds,  shrikes,  warblers,  orioles,  ra- 
vens and  francolins;  the  land-crabs,  beetles,  butterflies,  leeches, 
and  spiders  of  the  mountain  forests  or  of  the  alpine  slopes  up  to 
the  snow  level.  It  was  this  mountain  fauna  and  flora  we  had 
come  more  especially  to  examine;  but  the  Swahili  collectors  of 
those  days  could  only  take  an  interest  in  big  game. 

From  my  base  at  Kitimbiriu,  about  a  two-mile  walk  above 
Mandara's  town  in  Moshi,  I  ascended  beyond  the  limits  of  the 
forest  to  an  altitude  of  ten  thousand  feet,  out  of  the  forest  into 
the  open  country.  But  there  my  expedition  encountered  the  Wa- 
kibosho,  the  Chaga  enemies  of  Mandara.  They  hesitated  to 
attack  but  they  barred  the  way  up  to  the  peaks.  After  making 
a  rich  collection  of  plants  and  insects,  I  returned  to  Moshi  and 
finally  resolved  to  part  company  with  Mandara  and  establish 
myself  farther  to  the  east.  From  the  country  of  Maranu  I 
climbed  to  an  altitude  of  about  sixteen  thousand  feet,  somewhere 
near  the  middle  of  the  "saddle". which  runs  between  the  two  snow- 
crowned  craters  of  Kibo  and  Kimawenzi.  I  came  into  an  awe- 
inspiring  region  of  immense  clouds,  heard  the  thunder  bellow  at 
me  from  their  midst  as  though  I  had  indeed  disturbed  and  an- 
gered the  God  whom  the  natives  believed  to  dwell  in  these  icy 
solitudes.  My  few  followers  had  lagged  behind  or  run  back  to  a 
stopping  place  at  fourteen  thousand  feet. 

The  temperature  though  it  was  little  after  mid-day  was  down 
to  35° ;  I  could  not  pass  the  night  on  the  saddle  without  shelter 
or  blankets,  so  I  turned  back  and  made  for  our  highest  camp  at 
about  ten  thousand  five  hundred  feet.  This  I  fortunately  reached 
before  the  daylight  failed.  Here  we  had  met  and  at  last  made 
friends  with  the  Kobosho  people  who  dwelt  to  the  west  of  Moshi. 
They  proved  most  friendly  and  helpful,  far  different  from  Man- 
dara's folk  in  Moshi.  I  spent  a  really  happy  three  or  four  weeks 
at  this  altitude  before  the  rainy  weather  began.  The  Kibosho 
hunted  the  mountain  side  with  me  and  for  me,  above  the  forest 
limits,  bringing  me  in  collections  of  beetles,  of  small  mammals 
and  conies,  and  even  quite  carefully-gathered  plants  in  flower. 


THE  STORY  OF  MY  LIFE 


133 


Then — for  my  funds  were  threatening  to  get  exhausted  by  the 
time  I  had  paid  off  my  men  (they  did  in  fact  do  so,  and  the  last 
month  of  the  Kilimanjaro  Expedition  had  to  be  paid  for  by  my 
Graphic  Supplements  and  other  press  work) — I  started  to  walk 
round  the  mountain  above  the  forest  and  effected  a  descent  of 
Kilimanjaro  on  the  east,  entering  an  almost  uninhabited,  exceed- 
ingly wild  country  known  as  "Rombo."  A  few  days'  rest  at  Ta- 
veita  and  then  a  walk  to  the  coast.  I  dreaded  to  return  by  the  fam- 
ine-stricken route  to  Mombasa,  so  struck  off  by  Lake  Jipe  for  the 
valley  of  the  Rufu  River;  encountered  the  Masai ;  but  got  off  un- 
plundered  by  alleging — it  was  my  only  defence  and  quite  an  al- 
lowable falsehood — that  there  was  smallpox  in  my  caravan  (there 
had  been,  but  the  men  had  recovered)  ;  and  finally  reached  the 
port  of  Pangani  and  crossed  in  a  rotten  old  dau  to  Zanzibar. 

On  the  way  to  England  I  spent  two  interesting  weeks,  one  at 
Aden  and  another  in  Egypt.  I  visited  the  sea  coast  of  the  Aden 
peninsula  and  saw  the  caverns  in  the  rugged  sea  cliffs  with  their 
unexpectedly  rich  vegetation  at  their  entrances,  and  their  "Sin- 
bad"-like  features.  At  Cairo  I  met  Mr.  John  Cook  of  the  cele- 
brated firm  of  Thomas  Cook  (his  father).  He  had  been  out  on 
business  for  the  British  Government.  I  also  met  at  the  same 
time  Mons.  Charles  de  Lesseps,  the  son  of  the  "author"  of  the 
Suez  Canal.  With  them  I  traveled  to  Brindisi  by  a  P.  and  O. 
steamer  provided  with  such  sumptuous  and  luxurious  fare  as  I 
had  never  before  and  have  never  since  eaten  on  board  ship.  We 
spent  Christmas  on  board — that  and  the  presence  of  the  lesser  de 
Lesseps  and  the  wholly  estimable  John  Cook  had  roused  the  P. 
and  O.  Company  to  such  a  display  of  hospitality  as  took  me  by 
surprise.  There  were  few  other  passengers,  so  it  was  impartially 
distributed.  The  weather  was  divine.  At  Brindisi  Mr.  Cook 
asked  me  to  share  his  saloon  carriage  with  himself  and  two  mem- 
bers of  his  staff ;  and  so  we  traveled  to  Calais  in  greater  luxury 
than  I  have  ever  enjoyed  on  the  journey  before  or  since. 

Arrived  in  London,  I  found  the  Foreign  Office  surprised  and 
disappointed  to  see  me.  .  .  .  "We  thought  you  were  remaining 
— on  that  mountain,  you  know,  where  you  made  the  treaties? 


134 


THE  STORY  OF  MY  LIFE 


After  we  heard  what  the  Germans  were  doing  we  got  the  Gov- 
ernment to  agree  to  ratify  your  treaties  for  Kihmanjaro — and 
now  here  you  are  back,  and  goodness  knows  what  is  going  on  in 
East  Africa!  ..."  There  were  cross  purposes  in  these  com- 
plaints that  I  never  fully  understood.  The  Kilimanjaro  Expedi- 
tion had  in  its  inception  arisen  as  the  work  of  Sir  John  Kirk. 
Mandara,  the  ambitious  slave-raiding  chief,  who  was  trying  with 
his  thousand  soldiers  to  subdue  the  other  Chaga  chiefs  of  Kih- 
manjaro, had  opened  up  relations  with  the  great  "Balozi"  at 
Zanzibar  in  1882  and  1883,  and  Sir  John  Kirk  had  instigated 
the  British  Association  and  the  Royal  Society  to  finance  a  col- 
lector's mission  to  the  mountain  to  investigate  its  fauna  and  flora. 
He  had  communicated  his  purpose  to  the  Foreign  Office,  but  they 
had  chosen  to  assume  that  the  mission  to  Kilimanjaro  was  partly 
political.  In  the  month  of  April  spent  with  Kirk  at  Zanzibar 
he  had  obviously  contemplated  the  possibility  of  my  being  asked 
while  in  the  Kilimanjaro  district  to  negotiate  tentative  treaties 
with  Mandara  or  other  potentates  of  the  mountain,  and  had  sup- 
plied me  with  the  formula  such  documents  should  bear.  I  was 
not  to  press  such  negotiations  on  the  chieftains ;  only  to  deal  with 
such  a  matter  if  a  French  traveler  seemed  to  be  coming  to  the 
neighborhood.  (There  was  at  that  time  in  the  offing  a  very 
agreeable  French  explorer,  a  Mons.  Revoil,  who  was  at  Zanzibar 
in  the  month  of  April,  1884,  affecting  to  be  both  resting  from  one 
Somaliland  exploration  and  preparing  for  another.  He  came  not 
infrequently  to  the  British  Agency  to  see  Sir  John  Kirk,  and 
expressed  peculiar  interest  in  the  northern  part  of  the  Sayyid's 
Zanzibar  dominions,  putting  many  questions  to  me  as  to  my  own 
exploration  schemes.  He  probably  never  thought  of  political 
adventure,  south  of  the  Juba  River,  but  at  the  time  he  was  partic- 
ularly interested  in  the  remains  of  helot-Negro,  Gala-speaking 
tribes  like  the  Boni  in  the  coast  region,  north  of  Malindi.  These 
"Wa-boni" — as  they  were  called  by  the  Swahili — spoke  a  lan- 
guage that  was  very  near  to  Gala,^  but  in  physique  they  were 
emphatically  Negro.   Revoil,  I  am  sure  now,  was  perfectly  open 

1  See  for  an  example  of  it  my  above-cited  book  on  Kilimanjaro. 


THE  STORY  OF  MY  LIFE 


135 


and  honest  as  to  his  political  motives  and  his  interest  in  African 
peoples.  But  Sir  John  Kirk — whom  he  so  particularly  admired 
because  in  addition  to  his  great  achievements  Kirk  spoke  good 
French — was  very  suspicious  about  Revoil's  intentions.  He  knew 
he  had  been  treaty-making  in  Somaliland  and  thought  he  de- 
signed— despite  the  fatuous  self-denial  Treaty  of  1862  concluded 
with  the  French — alienating  from  the  over-rule  of  Zanzibar  the 
tribes  between  the  Juba  River  and  Kilimanjaro.) 

So  I  carried  with  me  into  the  interior  the  draft-treaty-forms 
mentioned,  to  be  concluded  if  possible  with  the  chiefs  around 
Kilimanjaro  should  there  be  any  treaty-making  started  by  another 
European  power.    "European"  really  meant  French. 

I  remember — having  read  Baron  von  der  Decken's  book — that 
in  the  'sixties  this  Hanoverian  explorer  had  distinctly  contem- 
plated a  Prussian  Protectorate  being  instituted  over  East  Africa, 
since  Prussia  was  not  bound  by  the  same  self-denying  treaty  as 
Britain  and  France.  I  recalled  more  vividly  the  statements  of 
the  German  explorer  whom  Lord  Mayo  had  nursed  back  into 
health  near  the  Koroka  River  in  Southwest  Africa,  and  how  he 
had  said  he  was  on  his  way  to  make  treaties  and  surveys  in 
Ovamboland.  And  how  very  aggressive  I  had  found — from  a 
territorial  point  of  view — Dr.  Pechuel  Loesche  at  the  mouth  of 
the  Congo  in  1882;  and  how  Bismarck  had  wrecked  the  attempt 
to  settle  the  Congo  question  with  Portugal  direct.  Still  I  do  not 
think  for  a  moment  I  contemplated  any  German  political  rivalry 
in  East  Africa  until  the  end  of  1884.  Yet  at  the  close  of  August 
in  that  year  an  important  Swahili  caravan  came  to  Moshi  and  its 
leader  (possibly  Jumbe  Kimemeta  whom  I  saw  at  Mandara's 
court)  informed  me  some  Europeans  were  making  treaties  with 
native  chiefs  "beyond  Kahe" — about  three  days'  journey  south 
of  the  great  mountain.^ 

I  myself  was  impatient  to  ascend  Kilimanjaro  and  be  absent 

1  The  Germans — Dr.  Karl  Peters,  Count  Joachim  Pfeil  and  Dr.  Jiihlke — 
apparently  did  not  make  their  first  treaty  in  Usambara  till  November,  1884. 
These  rumors  of  what  was  being  done  in  Nguru  or  Usambara  were  perhaps 
an  exaggeration  of  the  efforts  made  by  missionaries  to  buy  land  for  schools 
or  cultivation.  I  attributed  the  rumor  to  the  Belgians  who  were  opening  up 
an  east  coast  route  to  the  Upper  Congo  via  Tanganyika. 


136 


THE  STORY  OF  MY  LIFE 


on  the  heights  collecting.  So  to  make  sure  I  broached  the  subject 
of  a  treaty  to  Mandara,  meaning,  in  fact,  to  leave  him  altogether 
as  soon  as  I  could ;  for  all  the  native  tribes  around  him  were  at 
w^ar  with  this  slave-trading  chief.  Mandara  after  considerable 
argument  agreed  at  last  to  put  his  mark  on  a  form  of  agreement 
by  which,  if  the  Sultan  of  Zanzibar  waived  his  suzerainty  over 
Kilimanjaro,  he,  Mandara,  agreed  to  accept  the  Queen  of  Eng- 
land instead. 

Later  on  I  got  Miriali,  the  chief  of  Maranu,  to  make  his  mark 
on  the  same  kind  of  treaty,  and  concluded  a  similar  agreement 
with  the  Elders  of  Taveita. 

About  this  time — August-September,  188^1 — I  received  a  pri- 
vate letter  from  the  Foreign  Office,  suggesting  that  some  such 
steps  should  be  taken,  in  consultation  with  Sir  John  Kirk.  So  I 
sent  the  originals  of  these  treaties  to  London  by  the  leader  of  the 
Swahili  caravan  who  would  convey  them  to  a  port  on  the  coast 
and  then  post  them.  By  another,  shorter  route  I  sent  copies  to 
Sir  John  Kirk,  who  I  had  reason  to  think  was  far  away  to  the 
south  of  Zanzibar.  He  did  not  receive  them  till  some  time  after 
I  had  myself  left  for  England.  Sir  John,  in  fact,  filled  with  sud- 
den suspicion  as  to  German  intentions,  had  taken  a  long  excursion 
to  Lindi  in  the  southern  part  of  the  Swahili  coast.  He  did  not 
return  to  Zanzibar  till  two  days  before  my  steamer  sailed  for 
Aden  and  only  heard  from  me  about  my  treaties  the  day  I  was 
going  on  board.  However  they  were  eventually — later  on  in 
1885 — recognized,  and  were  quoted  as  our  first  authority  to  inter- 
fere in  inner  East  Africa  beyond  the  Sultan  of  Zanzibar's  domin- 
ions. Major  H.  H.  Kitchener — afterwards  Lord  Kitchener  of 
Khartum — was  sent  to  inspect  these  territories  and  do  other 
things  to  strengthen  our  hold  over  them;  for  in  the  beginning  of 
1885  the  Germans  were  recklessly  overriding  these  documents 
with  transactions  they  forced  on  the  bewildered  natives.  For 
five  years  Kilimanjaro  came  within  the  British  sphere — at  any 
rate  Mandara's  country  was  considered  to  be  under  the  British 
flag.  The  Church  Missionary  Society  sent  missionaries  to  occupy 
my  old  station  of  Kitimbiriu,  and  I  handed  my  "concessions"  at 
Taveita  to  Mr.  James  Hutton  and  a  group  of  Manchester  mer- 


THE  STORY  OF  MY  LIFE 


137 


chants  who  formed  the  nucleus  of  the  Imperial  British  East 
Africa  Chartered  Company. 

But  this  association  viewed  very  timorously  the  project  of 
financing  a  company  to  "work"  inner  East  Africa.  Mr.  William 
Mackinnon  who  held  most  of  the  shares  of  the  British  India 
Steam  Navigation  Company,  and  who  had  in  1877  been  offered 
(but  had  refused)  a  huge  concession  on  the  East  African  coast 
by  the  "Sultan"  ^  of  Zanzibar,  invited  me  to  his  home  in  the  Mull 
of  Cantyre  to  discuss  the  Congo  and  East  Africa.  This  was  in 
1883,  after  my  return  from  the  Congo  and  before  my  second  visit 
to  Brussels. 

This  first  visit  however  was  a  great  disappointment.  The 
King  of  the  Belgians  had  referred  once  or  twice  to  Mr.  Mackin- 
non, Stanley  had  talked  a  good  deal  about  him.  Neither  had 
given  any  description  of  his  personal  appearance. 

He  was  like  the  then  Duke  of  Argyle — the  author  of  The 
Reign  of  Law — only  smaller :  a  leetle,  dapper,  upright  man,  with 
an  aquiline  nose,  side  whiskers,  a  pouting  mouth,  and  a  strutting 
manner  of  walking  and  holding  himself.  His  reception  of  me 
after  my  long  steamer  journey,  long  and  tiring  drive  of  eleven 
miles  from  Port  Tarbert  (Mull  of  Cantyre),  was  kind,  but 
throughout  his  large  modern  house  there  was  no  trace  of  comfort, 
and  the  temperature  of  Scotland  is  always  cool.  If  it  isn't  cold,  it 
is  chilly.  It  is  a  country  where  you  hardly  dare  let  the  fires  go  out 
in  the  dwelling-rooms.  This  was  early  September  but  the  autumn 
had  lowered  the  temperature  already. 

Fortunately  for  me  there  were  other  guests  staying  there,  lured 
like  myself  from  London,  who  felt  the  cold  as  much  as  I  did.  It 
was  almost  before  the  days  of  brisk  games  out  of  doors  which 
stirred  the  circulation.  We  were  taken  long  drives  and  returned 
with  blue  noses  and  chattering  teeth.  The  meals  were  strangely 
sparse:  never  saw  I  partridges,  grouse,  and  chickens  so  small. 
But  it  was  Religion  which  made  the  visit  so  hard  to  bear.  Our 
host  and  hostess  were  not  ordinary  Presbyterians:  the  members 
and  services  of  the  Church  of  Scotland  can  be  genial,  not  merely 

1  The  ruler  of  Zanzibar  was  not  known  as  the  "Sultan"  officially  till  this 
European  wrangle  over  his  rights.    He  was  entitled  the  Sayyid  ("Lord"). 


138 


THE  STORY  OF  MY  LIFE 


bearable;  and  the  same  could  be  said  of  the  Free  Kirk  and  the 
United  Presbyterians.  But  Sir  William  Mackinnon — as  he  be- 
came in  after  years — belonged  to  a  divergent  sect  of  Presby- 
terians who  had  invented  a  form  of  Penal  Servitude  to  take  the 
place  of  a  religion.  A  Minister  presided  at  the  service  (by  the 
grace  of  Sir  William),  clothed  in  every-day  garments.  There 
must  be  no  music — the  organ  was  a  lure  of  the  Scarlet  Woman. 
You  had  to  stand,  stand,  stand,  you  mustn't  kneel;  you  occa- 
sionally sat — I  suppose  we  must  have  sat  through  the  hour-long 
sermon ;  and  the  morning  service  seemed  to  last  from  ten  o'clock 
to  one. 

I  walked  away  from  this  Devil  worship— as  it  should  have 
been,  only  all  these  cruel  forms  of  fatigue  and  boredom  are 
attributed  to  the  God  of  Love — with  Miss  Helen  Fraser  ( ?) 
(Lady  Mackinnon's  sister).  She  was  quite  a  nice-looking,  amen- 
able woman,  but  in  terror  of  her  sister  and  her  sister's  husband. 
I  ventured  a  phrase  or  two  about  the  service,  but  she  stopped  and 
said  trtmhYmgly /'Don't  let  us  discuss  it ;  it  would  upset  William 
— and  my  sister." 

Lady  Mackinnon  the  previous  Saturday  night  (after  we  had 
risen  from  a  half-hovir  of  prayers,  during  which  Sir  William  had 
passed  all  his  guests  in  review  for  the  information  of  his  God) 
had  given  us  a  taste  of  her  mettle.  Before  the  eleven  female 
domestic  servants  had  left  the  room  she  delivered  a  brief  order 
to  the  senior  of  these  Daughters  of  the  Plow,  and  they  had  gone 
forth  about  the  drawing-rooms,  library  and  hall  and  had  returned 
with  the  keys  of  the  library  and  with  all  the  worldly  every-day 
books  and  magazines  strewn  about  the  sitting-rooms.  These 
they  handed  to  their  mistress  who  solemnly  locked  them  up  in  a 
large  cupboard  in  the  principal  drawing-room.  The  next  day 
(the  intolerable  Sabbath)  when  we  were  back  from  the  three 
hours'  service,  and  waiting  about  for  announcement  of  lunch,  I 
idly  turned  over  the  leaves  of  a  Bradshaw,  the  only  form  of  non- 
sacred  literature  exposed  to  view.  "Er — er — what  have  you 
there?"  asked  Mrs.  Mackinnon.  "A  Bradshaw,"  I  replied.  She 
hesitated  and  gulped,  but  decided  to  say  nothing  and  let  me  go  to 
my  doom. 


CHAPTER  VII 


In  the  spring  of  1885,  when  I  had  returned  from  East  Africa 
and  was  Hving  in  a  top-story  flat  at  St.  Margaret's  Mansions 
Victoria  Street,  working  hard  at  my  book  on  KiHmanjaro,  I 
was  invited  by  the  Baroness  Burdett  Coutts  to  go  and  see  her,  she 
having  heard  of  me  from  Stanley.  I  went,  and  promised  further 
to  attend  a  somewhat  vague  drawing-room  meeting  at  her  house 
to  consider  East  African  questions,  the  controversy  being  excited 
by  the  German  proclamation  of  a  Protectorate.  At  this  meeting 
the  Baroness  advised  our  coming  to  terms  in  some  way  with  the 
King  of  the  Belgians.  Albert  Grey  (the  future  Earl  Grey), 
afterwards  so  much  involved  in  the  affairs  of  the  British  South 
Africa  Company,  was  present.  He  came  up  to  me  and  introduced 
himself.  "Why  don't  you  get  up  and  say  something?  Break 
this  awful  silence?" 

"I  haven't  anything  to  say,"  I  replied.  "I  don't  know  whether 
to  attack  or  defend  the  King  of  the  Belgians.  Stanley  is  coming 
home.  Some  other  Englishman  is  to  be  appointed  Governor  of 
the  Congo,  but  the  King  seems  likely  to  choose  a  dufifer."  Then 
— irresistibly — I  told  him  about  Kilimanjaro. 

He  rose  to  his  feet  and  despite  a  feeble  protest  on  my  part  bore 
me  off  in  a  hansom  to  see  Mr.  Mackinnon  at  the  Burlington 
Hotel.  We  were  admitted  sans  phrase,  and  Grey  urged  Mackin- 
non impetuously  to  take  up  my  concession  and  send  men  out  to 
settle  on  it  and  make  East  Africa  British.  Mackinnon  declined. 
He  refused  to  have  any  faith  in  East  Africa. 

In  July  of  that  year  I  asked  the  Foreign  Office  to  send  me  out 
to  some  part  of  Tropical  Africa  in  a  consular  capacity.  An 
Under  Secretary  replied  that  my  name  would  be  submitted  to 
Lord  Salisbury  in  due  course;  and  enquired  in  a  private  letter 
whether  I  was  prepared,  if  the  present  Consul  withdrew,  to  go 

139 


140 


THE  STORY  OF  MY  LIFE 


to  Mogambique  with  a  view  to  observing  the  progress  of  events 
in  Nyasaland.  I  of  course  professed  my  wiUingness,  but  upon 
reconsideration  the  Mozambique  Consul  withdrew  his  request  for 
a  transfer.  Then  I  was  definitely  offered  a  double  Vice  Consular 
post  in  the  Niger  Delta  and  the  Cameroons;  with  a  hint  that 
should  Consul  Edward  Hewett  retire  for  reasons  of  health  I 
might  qualify  for  succession  to  him  in  a  region  over  which  we 
were  asserting  our  political  claims. 

This  suggestion  fully  appealed  to  me.  The  Vice  Consulates 
were  of  the  commissioned  class,  the  officer  being  styled  "Her 
Majesty's  Vice  Consul."  The  joint  salary  equaled — or  very 
nearly  so — that  of  Mogambique;  and  it  seemed  very  likely  that 
Hewett — whom  I  saw  in  London — would  soon  relinquish  the 
chief  post.  The  greatest  attraction  to  me  in  the  double  post  was 
that  it  put  me  in  a  position  to  explore  the  highly  interesting  field 
of  the  Cameroons  Mountains,  the  Niger  Delta,  and  possibly  the 
countries  along  the  Benue.  With  my  immediate  future  thus  set- 
tled I  spent  a  very  happy  summer  and  autumn,  staying  with  my 
father  in  a  house  he  had  taken  on  the  heights  west  of  Clifton  in 
Gloucestershire.  This  enabled  me  to  pursue  certain  studies  at  the 
Clifton  Zoological  Gardens.  In  London  I  began  working  at  the 
Foreign  Office. 

My  father  at  this  time  had  decided  for  reasons  of  health  to 
retire  altogether  from  business.  He  therefore  resigned  his  posi- 
tion of  Secretary  to  the  Royal  Insurance  Company  and  was 
treated  by  them  with  befitting  consideration,  so  that  after  retire- 
ment his  income  was  little  less  than  during  his  long  service  for 
this  Insurance  Company  which  had  begun,  I  believe,  in  1850.  He 
therefore  settled  down  in  his  house  on  Champion  Hill  and  de- 
voted himself  to  the  development  of  his  Church  near  by.  His 
love  of  the  country  was  as  intense  as  ever,  but  was  sufficiently 
slaked  by  taking  a  furnished  house  somewhere  each  recurring 
summer.  I  do  not  think  he  went  abroad  after  his  retirement,  but 
maintained  his  interest  in  the  wilder  lands  by  attending  the  meet- 
ings of  the  Royal  Geographical  Society. 

In  the  year  1885  I  first  made  the  acquaintance  of  Oswald 


THE  STORY  OF  MY  LIFE 


141 


Crawfurd,  C.  Kegan  Paul,  Alfred  Chenevix  Trench  (his  part- 
ner), (Sir)  Richard  and  (Lady)  Isabel  Burton,  Edward  Fair- 
field of  the  Colonial  Ofifice  (the  nearest  individual  in  real  life  to 
"Arthur  Rroadmead"  in  The  Gay-Dombeys)  ;  Mrs.  Drummond 
and  her  daughter  Mrs.  Kay  of  Hyde  Park  Gardens  and  Fredley, 
near  Box  Hill  in  Surrey  (from  whose  garden  I  used  to  see 
George  Meredith  walking  slowly  about  the  lanes  and  approaches 
to  Box  Hill)  ;  Justin  McCarthy  and  his  brilliant  son,  Justin 
Huntly;  George  Grossmith  (through  the  Hepworth-Dixons — 
Ella  Hepworth-Dixon,  a  delightful  woman  and  writer,  has  been 
my  friend  ever  since)  ;  Edwin  Arnold,  poet  and  leader-writer; 
William  Stead  ;^  John  Scott  Keltic  who  became  about  that  time 
Librarian  to  the  Royal  Geographical  Society ;  and  his  son-in-law 
— then  private  secretary  to  Lord  Rosebery — Thomas  Lennox 
Gilmour.  There  were  also  my  ex-student  friends  in  the  painting 
world,  just  entering  on  a  bitter  struggle  with  the  Royal  Academy 
— H.  H.  La  Thangue,  J.  Stanhope  Forbes,  S.  Melton  Fisher, 
Harvard  Thomas,  J.  M.  Swan,  J.  E.  Christie.  Most  of  them  still 
clung  to  the  once-happy  group  of  Trafalgar  Studios,  but  had 
entered  on  a  rebellious  attitude  toward  the  ideals  of  Burlington 
House  (which  most  of  them  have  now  forgotten),  when  their 
early  works  were  skied  or  dismissed,  and  when  they  sought  com- 
pensation by  exhibiting  extraordinarily  clever  work  at  the  Gros- 
venor  Gallery,  or  even  shook  the  dust  of  England  off  their  feet 
till  the  denser  discernment  of  the  Royal  Academy  had  perceived 
their  merits. 

It  seems  almost  incredible — to  me — how  many  events,  how 
much  friendship,  what  opening  careers,  what  missed  oppor- 
tunities came  into  my  life  in  these  nine  months  of  1885,  when 
I  was  twenty-six  to  twenty-seven.  I  can't  remember  who  pre- 
sented me  to  Charles  Kegan  Paul,  in  those  days  a  very  influen- 
tial publisher;  but  he  served  as  the  intermediary  of  my  coming 
to  know  many  other  people.  He  introduced  me  first  to  his 
partner,  Alfred  Chenevix  Trench  (the  son  of  the  Archbishop 

1 1  had  made  Stead's  acquaintance  in  the  winter  of  1883-4,  when  he  "inter- 
viewed" me  in  the  Pall  Mall  Ga::ette. 


142 


THE  STORY  OF  MY  LIFE 


of  Dublin — of  whom  more  anon),  and  then  to  Mrs.  Joseph 
Kay  and  her  mother,  Mrs.  Drummond.^  Kegan  Paul  in  those 
days  lived  in  a  nice  spacious  house  in  Ashley  Gardens,  South 
Kensington.  He  was  the  husband  of  a  pleasant  woman  and  the 
father  of  several  clever  sons  and  daughters.  The  sons  were 
at  good  schools;  the  daughters  just  old  enough  to  be  at  home, 
their  school  studies  finished.  AW  seemed  as  happy  as  might  be. 
Kegan  Paul  gave  delightful  dinners  and  luncheons  at  which  one 
met  the  rising  young  writers  of  the  day,  some  superbly  con- 
ceited like  Lionel  Johnson,  others  eager  for  information  and 
therefore  friendly  to  one  who  had  been  already  far  afield.  At 
this  house,  one  Sunday,  I  met  Mrs.  Kay  who  rushed  in  between 
lunching  at  one  place  and  going  to  tea  at  another  to  make  my 
acquaintance :  whence  followed  that  of  her  mother  and  sister. 

Kegan  Paul  published  my  book  (Kilimanjaro)  and  paid  me 
a  good  instalment  in  advance.  Visits  to  his  publishing  office  in 
Paternoster  Square  were  delightful.  In  those  days  he  was  an 
Agnostic,  toying  a  little  with  Comte ;  or  perhaps  he  was  a 
Comtist  trending  to  a  knowledge  that  all  without  the  scheme  of 
Fact  was  at  best  a  pardonable  supposition. 

In  1887  he  introduced  an  article  of  mine  to  (Sir)  James 
Knowles  of  the  Nineteenth  Century.  It  was  published  and 
thenceforth  till  the  death  of  Knowles  and  of  his  son-in-law,  W. 
Wray  Skilbeck,  I  wrote  at  intervals  for  that  Review.  Knowles, 
of  course,  as  every  one  knew,  had  been  a  successful  architect. 
He  had  designed  the  rebuilding  of  my  wife's  old  home  at  Hedsor, 
but  in  this  case  had  constructed  an  ugly  and  pretentious  house 
where  for  two  centuries  previously  had  stood  an  early  Georgian 
manor  house  of  distinguished  good  looks.  Knowles,  however, 
was  a  good  friend  to  me  and  an  admirable  host.  He  often  enter- 
tained Royalties,  who  had  a  considerable  appreciation  of  his 
merits  and  his  perfectly  organized  hospitality;  and  he  lived  in  a 
low-built  house  at  Queen  Anne's  Gate  overshadowed  by  the 

1  Mrs.  Drummond  was  the  very  aged  widow  of  a  remarkable  Under  Secre- 
tary of  State  for  Ireland — "Property  has  its  duties  as  well  as  its  rights"  was 
his  dictum. 


THE  STORY  OF  MY  LIFE 


143 


mushroom-growth  of  Queen  Anne's  Mansions.  I  not  infre- 
quently met  at  his  table  the  old  Duke  of  Cambridge,  one  of  the 
kindest  and  most  considerate  persons  I  ever  encountered:  far 
more  patient  and  painstaking  as  a  listener  and  a  setter-right 
than  his  colleague,  Lord  Wolseley — infinitely  more  so  than  a 
Kitchener  or  a  Duller. 

However,  to  revert  to  Kegan  Paul : — 

He  was  probably  in  his  prime  in  1885.  His  previous  history 
seems  to  have  been  a  University  training  and  a  cure  in  the 
Church  of  England;  then  a  mastership  at  Eton;  then  religious 
doubts  which  made  that  impossible ;  and  then  freedom  and  com- 
parative happiness  for  a  while,  during  which  time  he  clung  to 
the  last  figment  of  religion,  a  belief  in  the  philosophy  of  Auguste 
Comte.  When  I  first  met  him,  early  in  '85,  his  publishing  busi- 
ness— a  succession  to  the  old  Anglo-German  house  of  Triibner 
and  Company  which  published  grammars  of  recondite  Oriental, 
European  and  African  tongues — had  become  in  style  "Kegan 
Paul,  Trench  and  Triibner."  Alfred  Trench  had  found  most  of 
the  capital — I  fancy — and  Kegan  Paul  much  of  the  genius  and 
flair  which  made  this  group  at  that  time  a  noteworthy  center  of 
intelligence  and  discernment  in  publication.  I  believe  they  then 
published  the  Nineteenth  Century,  Tennyson's  poems,  and  the 
books  of  other  great  writers. 

Kegan  Paul  in  the  summer  of  1885  was  a  hale,  good-looking 
man,  well  advanced  in  middle-age,  with  singularly  mesmeric  eyes. 
He  was  the  only  person  who  ever  made  any  "mesmeric"  impres- 
sion on  me.  I  do  not  remember  his  perceiving  this,  but  he  told 
me  sometime  afterwards  in  the  smoking  room  at  Fredley  that  he 
had  long  before  realized  his  possession  of  this  power  but  had 
decided  it  was  wrong  to  use  it.  He  had  singularly  discerning, 
dark-gray  eyes,  and  his  look  was  dominating.  Yet  this  brilliantly 
clever  man,  deeply  read  in  English,  French  and  German  litera- 
ture, much  traveled  in  Western  Europe,  was  gulkd  in  some  way 
by  Horatio  Bottomley. 

Somewhere  toward  the  end  of  the  'eighties  he  was  induced  by 
Bottomley  to  take  a  leading  part  in  the  formation  of  an  "Anglo- 


144 


THE  STORY  OF  MY  LIFE 


Austrian"  Publishing  Company  or  some  association  allied 
thereto;  and  on  Bottomley's  disappearance  he  was  left  to  bear 
the  brunt  of  the  judicial  enquiry  into  the  financial  history  of  the 
dissolved  association.  Only — I  believe — by  his  sacrificing  his 
own  small  savings  and  much  of  his  wife's  property  did  he  succeed 
in  appeasing  Justice.  I  never  heard  that  it  particularly  solaced 
the  other  shareholders  that  Kegan  Paul — an  exceedingly  hard- 
working man — should  be  ruined,  and  that  Bottomley  should  be 
free  to  make  a  fresh  fortune  in  mine  speculations  in  Western 
Australia. 

Early  in  the  'nineties  Kegan  Paul  buried  himself  in  West 
Kensington  of  the  westernmost  and  struggled  to  write  a  few 
more  books.  He  became  a  Roman  Catholic  and  associated  him- 
self much  with  the  semi-mystic  works  of  perverse  French  Cath- 
olics who  in  earlier  life  had  been  free-thinkers  and  after  middle 
age  had  found  some  solace  of  thought  in  professing  an  attenuated 
form  of  Catholicism.  Then — when  was  it?  Twenty  years  ago 
and  more  ? — he  ran  to  catch  an  omnibus  somewhere  in  Piccadilly, 
fell,  and  broke  his  leg.  After  that  he  had  a  paralytic  stroke  and 
must  have  died  somewhere  about  June,  1902.  His  influence  on 
British  literature  and  his  association  with  the  Neo-Catholicism 
of  France,  the  position  he  once  occupied  in  London  should  have 
been  sufficient  to  have  assured  him  a  short  biographical  notice  in 
the  later  editions  of  the  Encyclopaedia  Britannica  which  can 
afford  space  for  an  account  of  Paul  of  Samosata,  an  obscure 
bishop  in  Syria  appointed  by  Queen  Zenobia  in  260  a.c.  who  had 
no  efifect  whatever  on  the  world  ...  or  even  on  Samosata ! 
And  although  the  eleventh  edition  of  the  Encyclopccdia  Britan- 
nica came  out  in  1911  and  the  twelfth  in  1921-2,  there  is  in 
neither  any  mention  of  Horatio  Bottomley,  who,  whether  for 
good  or  evil  particularly  marked  the  first  quarter  of  the  twenti- 
eth century  and  profoundly  affected  the  destiny  of  a  remarkable 
thinker  and  writer  like  Charles  Kegan  Paul. 

Oswald  Crawfurd  was  likewise  an  interesting  person  to  have 
come  to  know,  early  in  1885.  He  was  British  Consul  at  Oporto 
in  northern  Portugal,  but  somehow  contrived  to  live  in  England 


THE  STORY  OF  MY  LIFE 


145 


at  Queen  Anne's  Mansions  from  about  May  till  October.  He 
had  married  a  remarkably  clever  woman  of  distinguished  appear- 
ance, the  sister  of  Sir  Clare  Ford,  British  Envoy  at  Madrid,  the 
son  by  the  first  marriage  of  Richard  Ford  who  had  written  a 
world-famous  guide-book  to  the  Spain  of  the  first  half  of  the 
nineteenth  century.  Richard  Ford  had  married  twice,  and  Mrs. 
Crawfurd  was  a  daughter  of  his  second  wife,  but  she  was  appar- 
ently much  attached  to  her  half-brother,  Sir  Clare.  I  have  called 
her  justly  "distinguished-looking,"  but  she  was  not  handsome. 
Yet  she  was  witty — sometimes  a  little  bitter;  spoke  three  or  more 
European  languages,  and  to  those  she  liked  could  be — as  she  was 
to  me — a  truly  kind  friend.  But  even  when  I  first  met  her  in 
1885  she  seemed  unhappy,  devoted  to  a  husband  font  soit  peu 
volagc.  Crawfurd  himself  was  a  fascinating  man,  exceedingly 
kind,  very  talented,  but  susceptible  to  the  charms  of  young  and 
talented  women,  who  threw  themselves  at  his  head  while  affecting 
to  be  his  wife's  devoted  companions.  This  is  rather  as  I  came  to 
know  him  in  later  years.  In  1885  I  had  met  him  at  a  dinner  party 
given  by  the  Trenches,  and  at  first  found  he  took  little  interest  in 
me  till  a  chance  remark  showed  him  that  I  knew  Portuguese. 
Then  he  opened  out,  talked  to  me  about  a  charming  book  he  was 
beginning  to  write  on  Portugal  "all  through  the  year."  ^  He  was  a 
son  of  the  John  Crawfurd  who  had  been  Administrator  of  British 
Malaysia  (Governor  of  Singapore)  in  the  early  part  of  the  nine- 
teenth century.  He  had  entered  the  Foreign  Office  as  quite  a 
young  man,  but  fearing  he  had  "consumptive"  tendencies  had 
applied  for  the  Madeira  Consulate  where  he  grew  quite  strong. 
He  had  thoroughly  mastered  Portuguese  and  spoke  it  better  than 
many  a  Portuguese,  interesting  himself  also  in  the  songs  of 
northern  Portugal  and  the  local  northern  dialect  of  the  language. 

Oswald  Crawfurd  in  the  summer  of  1885  avowed  his  intention 
of  introducing  me  to  the  African  explorer,  Richard  Burton.  To 
know  Burton  had  been  one  of  the  seemingly  unrealizable  dreams 
of  my  boyhood — and  I  was  almost  equally  interested  in  his  wife. 
Accordingly  he  having  come  to  England  in  June  or  July,  1885,  I 

1  Round  the  Calendar  in  Portugal. 


146 


THE  STORY  OF  MY  LIFE 


was  convoked  to  meet  him.  We  arrived  simultaneously  at  the  old 
entrance  to  Queen  Anne's  Mansions  and  were  both  together 
introduced  into  something  like  a  boot-cupboard,  some  stuffy,  con- 
stricted, smelly  little  hole  of  a  place  instead  of  the  outer  door  of 
Crawfurds?  flat:  how  or  why,  I  can  not  think.  Under  these 
embarrassing  circumstances  I  had  to  introduce  myself  to  Burton 
and  then  issue  from  our  confinement  and  grope  for  the  real  door 
of  entry.  This  unconventionality  of  approach  dissipated  all  for- 
mality and  we  entered  the  Crawfurds'  drawing-room  (very 
"aesthetic")  laughing  heartily.  From  that  moment  we  became 
friends.  Together  with  Edward  Fairfield  of  the  Colonial  Office, 
whom  I  had  come  to  know  over  African  questions  (Fairfield 
was  almost  the  only  person  in  that  Ofiice  at  that  date  who  took 
any  interest  in  Africa)  I  subscribed  to  the  great  translation  of 
the  Arabian  Nights  which  Burton  had  come  to  London  to  pub- 
lish. Possibly  I  obtained  a  few  other  subscribers,  and  very  likely 
this  was  done  by  me  before  I  met  Burton  personally.  But  I  had 
the  joy  soon  after  the  dinner  at  Crawfurd's  of  giving  a  "Burton" 
dinner  myself  at  the  Scottish  Club,  asking  Fairfield,  and  a  num- 
ber of  other  people  to  meet  him. 

He  was  at  his  most  charming  manner:  amusing,  informative, 
reminiscent;  daring,  yet  kindly.  I  have  seldom  heard  such  con- 
versation :  there  is  nothing  like  it  nowadays.  Clever  people  are 
too  guarded  as  to  what  they  say,  lest  they  be  distributing  "copy"  ; 
politicians  are  afraid  of  committing  themselves  or  of  revealing 
their  gaps  of  knowledge.  I  dared  much  to  provide  an  assemblage 
worthy  of  such  a  guest,  and  having  first  obtained  Burton's 
acceptance  I  asked  men  like  H.  W.  Bates  (Secretary  of  the  Royal 
Geographical),  John  Scott  Keltic  (its  recently  appointed  Libra- 
rian), Edwin  Arnold  of  the  Daily  Telegraph,  Edward  Fairfield 
of  the  Colonial  Office,  Dr.  Sclater  of  the  Zoological  Society, 
Major  Champain  of  the  Indo-Persian  Overland  Telegraph,  and  a 
tenth  person  whose  individuality  I  have  forgotten — probably 
Oswald  Crawfurd  or  T.  Douglas  Murray.  It  was  a  most  suc- 
cessful evening  and  a  reflex  of  it  appears  in  my  story  of  The 
Gay-Dombeys. 


THE  STORY  OF  MY  LIFE 


147 


I  had  read  Burton's  books  from  the  age  of  fourteen  and  had 
singularly  desired  to  meet  him  and  his  wife,  whose  books  I  had 
also  studied.  They  at  any  rate  revealed  her  lovable  disposition, 
even  if  they  were  neither  scientific  nor  always  accurate.  We  had 
many  subjects  of  common  interest,  in  most  of  which  he  far 
excelled  me,  such  as  in  his  knowledge  of  Arabic  and  Portuguese, 
of  East  and  West  Africa,  of  Italian,  and  dialects  or  subordinate 
languages  in  Italy.  He  had  been  almost  the  first  of  British  writ- 
ers to  grasp  the  scheme  of  the  Bantu  languages  of  Africa  and  I 
was  ambitiously  contemplating  the  compilation  of  a  conclusive 
study  of  that  form  of  speech,  the  completion  of  the  work  which 
W.  H.  I.  Bleek  had  just  begun  when  he  died  in  1875. 

Burton  seemed  in  most  respects  the  finisher  of  studies  I  had 
only  adumbrated.  "Why,"  I  asked  myself,  almost  in  despair, 
"had  I  just  met  him  when  he  was  entering  old  age  and  I  was 
about  to  depart  on  a  long  absence — two  or  three  years — in  Cen- 
tral Africa?" 

For,  not  long  after  he  had  left  London  to  return  to  Trieste, 
having  secured  some  ten  thousand  pounds  in  subscriptions  to  his 
ten  first  volumes  of  the  Arabian  Nights  (and  being  for  the  first 
time  in  his  life  in  financial  ease),  I  had  embarked  with  my  Tamil 
servant  for  the  Niger  Delta.  I  left  Liverpool  at  the  beginning  of 
October,  1885,  as  Her  Majesty's  Vice  Consul  for  the  "Oil 
Rivers"  and  for  the  Cameroons. 

My  journey  out  to  West  Africa  on  this  occasion  had  a  dreary 
character.  The  steamer  was  of  an  old-fashioned  type,  the  cap- 
tain and  ofificers  not  particularly  pleasant,  and  the  fellow  passen- 
gers very  earnest  but  not  well-educated  male  and  female  mission- 
aries, belonging  to  no  very  definite  church.  The  picture  of  this 
voyage  has  been  faithfully  drawn  in  the  early  part  of  my  novel, 
The  Gay-Domhcys;  so  I  can  leave  it  there  to  be  scanned  by  any 
reader — if  such  a  being  exists — who  desires  to  follow  all  the  epi- 
sodes of  my  life.  I  was  thankful  when  we  anchored  off  the  town 
of  Bonny  and  I  was  within  my  Consular  district.  I  landed  there 
and  renewed  acquaintance  with  the  chiefs  and  people.  It  was 
here,  three  and  a  half  years  before,  that  I  had  first  seen  rankly 


148 


THE  STORY  OF  MY  LIFE 


tropical  vegetation  and  walked  in  an  equatorial  forest.  I  noticed 
a  good  deal  of  difference  in  the  second  visit :  much  more  clearing, 
more  buildings  in  corrugated  iron,  greater  activity  in  trade. 

My  next  halt  was  at  Old  Calabar — also  already  known  to  me ; 
and  then  we  passed  the  always-momentous  spectacle  of  the  Cam- 
eroons  Mountain  coast,  with  its  two  noteworthy  peaks  and  the 
ten  thousand- feet-high  volcano  of  Fernando  Poo  opposite.  The 
steamer  anchored  in  the  estuary  of  the  wide  Cameroons  River;  I 
went  on  shore  and  presented  my  respects  and  letter  of  appoint- 
ment to  the  German  Governor  (Baron  von  Soden),  and  also  saw 
the  Secretary  of  the  Colony,  who  became  acting  governor  in  von 
Soden's  absence.  This  Secretary  was  the  very  Prussian  person- 
ality of  Herr  von  Puttkammer,  who  long  afterwards  became 
Governor  of  this  German  possession.  He  was  I  believe  a  nephew 
of  the  Princess  Bismarck,  or  so  at  least  he  was  reputed  to  be. 
He  seemed  to  me  somewhat  to  ostend  his  relationship  with  the 
Bismarck  household,  and  was  generally  an  aggressive  person. 
The  Baron  von  Soden  (a  Wiirttemberger)  was  a  more  dis- 
tinguished man  of  greater  courtesy.  Having  obtained  recogni- 
tion of  my  commission  I  had  to  explain  to  the  Governor  that  my 
Consulate  was  going  to  be  built  on  the  island  of  Mondole  (then  a 
British  possession)  two  or  three  miles  out  at  sea  in  Ambas  Bay 
and  opposite  the  settlement  of  Victoria.  Part  of  my  duties  was 
to  administer  affairs  in  this  tiny  British  colony  of  the  Cameroons 
Mountain,  annexed  by  Consul  Hewett  in  1884. 

The  European  colony  on  the  Cameroons  coast  and  on  the 
estuary  of  the  Wuri  or  Cameroons  River  was  really  founded  by 
the  Baptist  Mission  of  Great  Britain  (and  Jamaica).  It  is  a 
wonderful  story  which  I  have  partly  told  in  my  study  of  George 
Grenfell's  life  and  work  in  the  Cameroons  and  Congo  State. 
Although  the  configuration  of  the  Cameroons  coast  was  known 
with  more  or  less  accuracy  after  the  surveys  of  Sir  ,W.  F.  W. 
Owen's  remarkable  naval  expedition  round  Africa  in  the  years 
1823-1831,  I  doubt  if  there  were  any  British  or  other  ships  per- 
manently anchored  up  the  Cameroons  River,  and  there  were  cer- 
tainly no  British  or  other  houses  of  commerce  erected  anywhere 


THE  STORY  OF  MY  LIFE 


149 


on  Cameroons  territory  until  after  the  settlement  of  the  mission- 
ary Saker  in  1850.  Saker  and  his  colleagues  strove  for  years  to 
abate  the  wild  and  reckless  natures  of  the  boisterous  (one-time 
cannibal)  Duala  people,  and  had  a  little  less  difficulty  with  the 
Bakwiri  and  Isubu  of  the  coast  at  the  foot  of  the  Cameroons 
Mountain/ 

By  1882  all  these  peoples  were  becoming  anxious  about  their 
country's  future.  The  return  of  Stanley  to  the  mouth  of  the 
Congo  in  1879  had  caused  a  tremendous  wave  of  anxiety  to  pass 
up  and  down  the  coast  of  Equatorial  West  Africa.  The  white 
man  was  coming  again  to  interfere  with  this  region.  Dim  mem- 
ories remained  of  Portuguese  conquests  and  French  missionaries 
and  English  sea-fights  off  the  Congo-Cameroons  coast  in  the 
eighteenth  century.  In  the  first  half  of  the  nineteenth  the  French 
had  made  rather  feeble  attempts  to  colonize  the  Gaboon,  but  the 
Portuguese  had  been  inhibited  by  Great  Britain  from  extending 
their  Angola  colony  northward  toward  the  Congo  mouth. 

In  1882-83  the  British  Government  found  itself  receiving  for- 
mal requests  from  the  Cameroons  chiefs  and  many  large  and 
small  potentates  in  the  Niger  Delta  to  annex  or  control  their  ter- 
ritories, especially  with  a  view  to  forestalling  a  French  extension 
of  power  north  of  the  Gaboon.  These  petitions  were  favorably 
received  by  Mr.  Gladstone's  Government ;  and  Consul  E.  H. 
Hewett  was  supplied  with  treaty  forms  in  1883  and  instructed 
to  set  to  work  to  extend  British  protection  over  the  whole  west 
and  west-central  coast  of  Africa  between  Lagos  and  the  Spanish 
claim  at  the  Muni  River.  He  applied  himself  to  this  purpose  at 
the  end  of  1883  and  was  detained  a  considerable  time  over  the 
Niger  Delta.  Whilst  he  was  thus  engaged  the  German  Govern- 
ment sent  out  a  war  vessel  with  Dr.  Nachtigal  on  board  and  sur- 
prised Great  Britain  and  France  by  suddenly  negotiating  a  treaty 
(for  a  present  of  £1000)  with  "King"  Bell  (Bela)  of  the  Cam- 
eroons estuary.    Hewett  then  hurried  up,  and  annexed — after 

1  Dutch  travelers — or  rather  Frenchmen  traveling  for  Dutch  commerce 
visited  the  northern  Cameroons  coast  about  i68o,  and  one  of  them — Barbot — 
cited  the  numerals  of  the  Barundo  language.  See  p.  2  of  vol.  i.  of  my 
Comparative  Study  of  the  Bantu  Languages. 


150  THE  STORY  OF  MY  LIFE 

making  treaties  with  the  responsible  chiefs — all  the  remainder  of 
the  Cameroons  coast  country  and  mountain,  and  the  Duala  coun- 
try at  the  back  of  the  estuary.  Conseqviently  the  Germans  were 
left  with  only  about  fifteen  square  miles  of  land  on  the  south  bank 
of  the  estuary,  the  country  claimed  by  King  Bell. 

But  in  addition,  the  German  gunboat  had  carried  Dr.  Nachtigal 
to  other  points  on  the  Niger  Delta  coast  and  here  a  few  treaties 
had  been  made  or  were  presumed  to  have  been  made.  Our  deli- 
cate position  in  Egypt,  menaced  by  the  French,  constrained  us 
not  to  make  an  enemy  of  Germany,  who  also  coveted  Nigeria, 
Senegambia,  and  certain  points  on  either  side  of  Natal.  So  Lord 
Granville,  Lord  Salisbury,  Lord  Rosebery — whoever  was  For- 
eign Secretary  at  the  time — moderated  his  wrath  at  the  German 
intervention  and  decided  to  install  them  here  in  order  to  clear 
them  out  elsewhere. 

Once  the  German  Protectorate  was  recognized,  no  dififerential 
duties  were  levied  on  British  trade,  which  was  about  to  be  killed 
by  French  legislation  in  Madagascar  and  fettered  in  Tunis  and 
French  West  Africa.  The  Germans  were  allowed  to  mark  out 
for  themselves  a  great  domain  which  they  called  "Kamerun" 
(imagining  the  name  was  African  and  not  Portuguese),  reaching 
inland  to  Lake  Chad  and  the  Congo  Basin  and  amounting  finally 
to  two  hundred  thousand  square  miles. ^ 

My  first  visit  to  the  German  Cameroons  was  restricted  to  ob- 
taining my  recognition  as  Vice  Consul  and  then  returning  to 
British  Cameroons  to  have  the  building  of  my  house  commenced 
on  Mondole  Island  and  to  make  acquaintance  with  the  little  col- 
ony of  West  Indian  Christian  Negroes  at  Victoria.  These  had 
been  established  there  or  in  Bimbia  as  early  as  1841  or  1842. 

1  The  German  misapprehension  of  the  source  of  this  English  name — Cam- 
eroons from  the  Portuguese  Camaroes — gave  to  English  geographical 
misspellers  a  great  opportunity.  They  forthwith  dropped  the  s  and  styled 
this  district  "Cameroon."  The  Portuguese  sailor-explorers  of  the  fifteenth 
and  sixteenth  centuries  often  ascribed  very  trivial  names  to  African  land- 
marks and  territories.  "Gaboon,"  the  Portuguese  Gabao,  means  "a  smock 
frock";  Camaroes  is  the  plural  of  Camarao,  "a  shrimp."  There  are  certainly 
many  shrimps  or  prawns  in  the  great  estuary  of  the  Wuri  River;  but 
whether  they  were  of  sufficient  importance  in  those  days  to  become  the  title 
of  a  vast  region  between  the  basins  of  the  Niger  and  the  Congo,  I  can  not 
say.   But  if  the  name  is  retained  it  should  be  spelled  with  the  plural  s. 


THE  STORY  OF  MY  LIFE 


151 


By  1849,  Alfred  Saker,  the  Apostle  of  the  Cameroons,  who 
had  commenced  missionary  work  at  Fernando  Poo  at  the  end 
of  1843,  summed  up  his  Mission's  work  in  the  Cameroons  (Bim- 
bia,  Victoria,  Cameroons  River)  by  saying  they  had  introduced 
the  bread-fruit  tree,  pomegranate,  mango,  avocado  pear,  and 
mammec  apple  and  other  fruits  of  value,  all  of  them  suitable  to 
the  climate  of  the  Cameroons,  whither  the  Mission  had  brought 
them  from  the  West  Indies ;  and  that  they  had  distributed  cloth- 
ing and  medical  assistance  to  nearly  twenty  thousand  of  the 
natives.  They  had  set  up  a  sugar  mill  to  make  sugar  out  of  the 
cane ;  they  were  making  bricks  and  teaching  the  natives  to  do  so. 
I  have  recounted  the  principal  items  of  Baptist  Mission  work  in 
the  Cameroons  in  my  study  of  the  life  of  one  of  their  greatest 
missionaries,  George  Grenfell,  of  the  Cameroons  and  Congo, ^ 
so  will  not  here  repeat  what  has  already  appeared  in  print.  I 
admired  those  members  of  the  Mission  who  were  West  Indian 
Negroes,  like  the  Revd.  J.  J.  Fuller  and  the  Revds.  John  Pinnock, 
father  and  son,  quite  as  much  as  I  did  the  really  learned, 
courageous,  perspicuous  white  propagandists.  If  we  had  each 
laid  bare  to  the  other  the  extent  of  our  divergencies  of  belief  in 
the  transcendental  side  of  religion,  it  is  probable  we  should  have 
found  ourselves  widely  differing;  but  I  do  not  remember  at  any 
time,  in  the  Cameroons  or  on  the  Congo,  such  discussion.  I 
can  not  say  what  their  inner  faith  was,  nor  did  they  ever  question 
me  about  mine.  We  were  in  agreement  about  the  purely  practical 
side  of  Mission  work. 

I  have  often  found  merit  in  the  methods  of  German  coloniza- 
tion and  have  defended  their  administrators  and  their  actions. 
But  I  think  their  treatment — Prince  Bismarck's  treatment — of 
the  Baptist  Mission  in  the  Cameroons  indefensible  and  without 
excuse.  These  white  British  and  black  West  Indian  missionaries 
were  of  course  disappointed  that  the  British  Government  aban- 
doned two  hundred  thousand  square  miles  of  so-called  Cam- 
eroons territory  merely  because  the  German  Government  had 

1  George  Grenfell  and  the  Congo.    2  vols.    Hutchinson  &  Co.,  1908. 
For  a  fuller  exposition  of  my  views  on  this  subject,  see  pp.  10  to  17  of 
George  Grenfell  and  the  Congo. 


152 


THE  STORY  OF  MY  LIFE 


managed  to  purchase  a  right  to  rule  over  ten  to  twenty  square 
miles.  But  immediately  after  the  matter  was  settled  they  ab- 
stained from  interference  with  political  questions  and  were 
prepared  to  continue  their  work  under  German  administration, 
just  as  they  did  under  the  Belgians  on  the  Congo,  and  as  German 
missionaries  worked  tranquilly  in  South,  West  or  East  Africa 
under  British  rule.  But  the  German  Government  turned  the  Bap- 
tists away  from  the  Cameroons  River  between  1885  and  1887, 
forcibly,  without  excuse,  seized  their  nice  houses  and  admirable 
schools  for  government  purposes  and  only  tendered  them  finally 
a  miserable  payment  of  £2000  for  what  must  have  cost  between 
1850  and  1884  an  investment  of  £20,000  and  an  output  of  white 
labor  and  skill  unusual  in  West  Africa.  The  irony  of  it  was  that 
British  naval  officers  and  civilian  travelers  who  visited  the  Cam- 
eroons River  during  the  ten  years  that  followed  1885  would  write 
to  the  Press  to  point  out  what  practical,  ingenious,  far-sighted 
people  the  Germans  were :  "Look  for  example  at  the  houses  and 
offices  they  have  built  on  the  Cameroons  River.  ..."  And 
they  were  impressed  by  and  were  referring  to  the  buildings 
designed  and  constructed  by  Saker  and  his  succeeding  colleagues 
which  had  been  forcibly  taken  from  the  Mission  by  German  occu- 
pation. I  saw  a  good  deal  of  the  development  of  German  East 
Africa  but  did  not  there  observe  similar  bad  treatment  inflicted  on 
British  Missionary  Societies. 

The  spring  of  1886  was  marked  by  an  unhappy  incident  at 
Mondole  Island  where,  pending  the  finishing  of  my  house  and 
Consulate  on  the  top  of  the  island  (about  five  hundred  feet  above 
sea  level),  I  lived  in  the  little  three-roomed  house  built  on  the 
beach  by  a  Polish  explorer,  L.  Rogozinski.  Rogozinski  had  done 
some  rather  remarkable  exploring  work  on  the  Cameroons  Moun- 
tain and  elsewhere  inland.  Like  myself  in  1882,  he  had  been 
struck  with  the  appearance  and  position  of  Mondole,  which  after 
the  German  pounce  of  1884  had  been  annexed  as  British.  He 
had  come  to  London  in  1885 ;  I  met  him  there ;  and  he  offered  me 
the  use  of  his  house  while  my  own  was  building. 

My  household  and  staff  consisted  of  my  Tamil  servant  from 


THE  STORY  OF  MY  LIFE 


153 


Ceylon  who  had  accompanied  me  to  Kilimanjaro ;  an  Accra  cook : 
and  six  Kru  "boat  boys"  from  Liberia.  These  Krumen  were  as 
good  a  lot  as  an  explorer  could  have  found  in  those  days,  and  they 
got  on  well  with  every  one ;  with  the  English  builder  of  my  house 
(who  lived  high  up  on  the  island  till  his  work  was  over),  with 
the  Tamil  steward  of  my  house  by  the  sea  shore.  But  in  the 
spring  of  that  year — 1886 — the  Tamil  became  very  ill  with 
Black- water  fever  (my  first  introduction  to  that  dread  form  of 
malaria,  which  I  took  then  to  be  yellow  fever).  I  had  to  nurse 
him  through  the  critical  part  of  the  disease  for  about  four  days 
and  was  hardly  able  to  sleep  during  that  time  as  he  was  badly 
delirious.  At  last  he  turned  the  corner  and  seemed  to  be  recover- 
ing. One  late  afternoon  I  fell  asleep  on  a  settee  in  the  middle 
sitting-room,  a  good,  long  sound  sleep.  Suddenly  I  was  awak- 
ened by  the  sound  of  scuffling  and  realized  that  naked  or  half 
naked  figures  were  surging  about  the  room  in  the  twilight.  It 
was  the  Tamil  invalid  whom  two  Kruboys  were  trying  to  grapple 
with  and  replace  in  his  bed.  He  darted  out  a  hand  at  the  little 
table,  laid  by  the  cook  for  my  evening  meal;  seized  a  table  knife 
and  stabbed  right  and  left  at  the  Kruboys.  One  of  them  spouted 
blood  from  the  neighborhood  of  his  collar  bone,  the  other  sank 
with  a  groan  on  the  floor.  The  emaciated  young  man  looked  at 
me  with  glaring  eyes,  hurled  the  knife  backwards  into  the  sea 
and  said,  "I  do  tliat  in  case  I  should  be  tempted  to  stab  you !" 

The  next  minute  he  was  in  the  waves,  but  apparently  the 
shock  of  the  cool  water  checked  his  madness;  he  turned  and 
walked  back  to  the  veranda  and  burst  out  crying.  I  felt  the  first 
call  on  me  was  for  the  wounded  Kruboys.  The  one  stabbed  in 
the  neck  had  rushed  uphill  to  apply  to  the  English  builder  for 
assistance;  the  headman,  stabbed  in  the  stomach,  was  sitting  on 
the  floor  of  my  little  house,  near  my  table  laid  for  dinner.  I 
decided  to  deal  first  with  him,  assisted  him  to  rise  and  supported 
his  steps  as  far  as  his  hut  not  far  away.  I  found  the  Tamil 
servant  assisting  him  on  the  other  side.  When  I  laid  the  man  on 
his  bed,  the  Tamil  helped  efiiciently,  and  then  held  a  lamp  to 
enable  me  to  examine  the  wound.    It  did  not  at  first  seem  very 


154 


THE  STORY  OF  MY  LIFE 


severe.  A  slit  about  an  inch  long  at  the  upper  part  of  the  stom- 
ach, not  bleeding  very  much,  but  with  a  small  portion  of  what 
I  took  to  be  the  pancreas  protruding.  I  dared  not  give  him 
alcohol,  in  case  it  led  to  hemorrhage ;  so  produced  instead  a  dose 
of  sal  volatile.  It  seemed  impossible  to  push  back  the  protrusion 
of  the  pancreas,  as  any  handling  of  it  caused  the  man  such  intense 
pain.  All  I  could  do  for  that  night  was  to  supply  a  bandage 
and  trust  to  secure  by  morning  efficient  help  from  Victoria  on  the 
mainland  or  from  the  English  builder  on  the  top  of  Mondole. 

This  last  individual  appeared  about  midnight  with  an  anxious 
enquiry.  He  had  spent  hours  stopping  the  flow  of  blood  from 
the  other  Kruboy's  lung,  which  had  been  just  touched  by  his 
stab.  The  mere  descent  of  the  hill  along  my  unfinished  road  was 
a  difficulty  in  the  great  darkness.  His  coming  enabled  us  to  put 
the  Tamil  back  to  bed  and  lock  his  bedroom  door.  His  tempera- 
ture had  gone  up  again  to  104°  and  he  was  once  more  raving. 
When  it  was  fully  light  the  builder  took  my  boat  and  the  remain- 
ing four  Kruboys  and  went  to  the  Baptist  Mission  station  at 
Victoria.  The  competent  West  Indian  missionary  (Mr.  Pin- 
nock)  was  away  on  a  propagandist  tour;  all  the  assistance  he 
could  find  was  a  Cuban  refugee  who  had  stabbed  and  been 
stabbed  repeatedly  in  the  course  of  his  political  career,  before 
he  was  conveyed  as  a  political  prisoner  to  Fernando  Poo — 
whence  he  had  just  escaped. 

With  this  man's  assistance  and  advice  we  did  what  we  could 
to  abate  the  inflammation  and  other  symptoms  of  the  unfortunate 
head-Kruman's  wound.  But  on  the  fifth  day  he  died.  On  the 
seventh  day  a  British  gunboat  called  at  Ambas  Bay.  I  then 
transferred  the  Tamil  servant  to  the  keeping  of  the  mayor  of 
Victoria  and  took  a  passage  to  Old  Calabar  to  lay  my  troubles 
before  Consul  Hewett. 

Soon  after  I  got  there  however  I  was  seized  myself  with  Black- 
water  fever.  It  was  a  disease  which  came  on  with  staggering 
suddenness  in  the  experience  of  most  sufferers.  In  spite  of  lack 
of  sleep  and  fatigues  of  all  kinds  I  did  not  feel  ill  when  I  reached 
Old  Calabar.  Consul  Hewett's  Consulate  was  finished  as  regards 


THE  STORY  OF  MY  LIFE 


155 


essentials —  It  is  still — I  believe — "Government  House"  at  Old 
Calabar.  Though  it  was  dark  in  the  inner  rooms  it  was  cool  and 
well-ventilated;  the  situation  was  elevated  and  picturesque;  and 
the  society  of  the  Consul  was  peculiarly  agreeable.  He  was  a 
well-educated  man  who  had  seen  much  of  the  world — not  always 
the  kind  and  cheery  side  of  it — and  who  had  a  singularly  kind 
disposition.  To  be  ill  in  his  house  was  not  as  it  would  be  with 
some — a  cause  for  annoyance,  but  it  called  forth  a  reserve  of 
sympathy  and  practical  help  which  in  more  fortunate  circum- 
stances you  might  never  have  tapped.  I  believe  he  seldom  left  my 
room  for  two  days  while  I  was  in  the  critical  stage  of  the  disease. 

However  I  made  a  quick  recovery.  Old  Calabar  in  those  times 
was  sufficiently  prosperous  and  the  firms  trading  there  suffi- 
ciently enlightened  not  only  to  maintain  for  their  employes  well- 
built,  bright,  well-furnished  houses,  but  to  support  a  first-class 
doctor,  who  rose  in  time  to  be  Principal  Medical  Officer  of  the 
Protectorate  and  to  receive,  twice,  the  specially  recorded  thanks 
of  Lord  Salisbury  for  his  efficient  management  of  the  Health 
Department.  Robert  Allman  saved  many  another  life  besides 
mine  by  having  in  a  short  space  of  time  come  to  understand  how 
this  apparent  intensification  of  malarial  fever  should  be  dealt 
with.^   I  have  since  those  days  had  this  same  type  of  fever  five 

^  In  my  case,  "Black-water"  or  "Haemogloblinuric"  fever  always  came  on 
with  great  suddenness  and  little  warning  of  ill-health,  other  than  a  sense 
of  feverish  sprightliness.  One's  first  evidence  was  the  passing  of  urine 
which  was  the  color  of  stout,  after  which  it  became  literally  black,  and 
then  in  succeeding  days  grew  redder  and  clear  till  it  might  be  likened  to 
port  wine.  With  this  symptom  ensued  a  deadly  nausea  and  weakness  and 
two  or  three  days  (or  a  week)  of  constant  vomiting.  In  bad  cases  the 
temperature  of  the  patient  rose  to  107°,  and  the  sufferer  passed  quickly  into 
coma  and  death.  In  all  instances  the  skin  turned  a  bright  yellow  or  a  yellow- 
brown.  This  symptom  caused  the  disease  to  be  confounded  for  a  century 
in  West  Africa  with  the  Yellow  Fever  of  Tropical  America,  which  as  a 
matter  of  fact  has  been  carried  into  the  coast  regions  of  West  Africa.  But 
the  two  diseases  are  quite  distinct.  True  "Black-water"  fever  has  made 
its  appearance  on  the  isthmus  of  Panama,  in  Florida,  Venezuela  and  Trinidad 
— whether  endemic  or  not.  It  has  broken  out  badly  in  Madagascar,  East 
Africa,  the  Egyptian  Sudan,  Southeast  Africa,  Rhodesia  and  Nyasaland, 
Barotseland,  Angola,  and  has  raged  in  the  Congo  Basin,  and  along  the 
west  coast  of  Africa  and  in  Nigeria.  It  was  first  diagnosed  as  a  distinct 
disease  in  West  Africa.  Negroes  are  said  either  to  be  immune  or  to  have 
it  much  more  slightly  than  white  men.    Haematuria  is  a  common  symptom 


156 


THE  STORY  OF  MY  LIFE 


other  times,  down  to  1901,  and  have  survived  chiefly  by  remem- 
bering and  applying  the  first  treatment  .  .  .  champagne,  in 
small  doses,  plenty  of  lemonade  if  limes  or  lemons  can  be  got, 
Brand's  Essence  of  beef  as  beef  tea,  chicken  broth,  and  moderate 
doses  of  quinine  as  soon  as  the  violence  of  the  attack  moderates. 
My  recovery  in  this  case  was  speedy,  and  I  was  anxious  to  get 
back  to  the  British  Cameroons  with  the  Consul  in  order  that  my 
servant's  case  could  be  disposed  of,  and  I  could  proceed  to  the 
interior  on  necessary  business,  surveying  and  treaty-making. 
When  we  reached  Victoria  the  Tamil  was  still  in  a  weak  condition 
but  more  or  less  returned  to  his  senses.  After  two  days'  hearing 
of  witnesses,  the  Consul,  who  tried  the  case  with  two  assessors, 
found  the  prisoner  not  guilty  of  murder,  but  ordered  him  to  be 
detained  during  Her  Majesty's  pleasure  and  sent  him  to  the  Gold 
Coast  for  detention.  From  this  colony  he  was  eventually  repatri- 
ated to  Ceylon.  Here  he  regained  his  health,  married,  and 
became  a  steward  on  a  line  of  steamers! 

It  was  curious  that  as  soon  as  he  regained  his  senses  and  ceased 
to  be  delirious,  when  landed  at  Victoria,  Ambas  Bay,  he  seemed 
to  be  absolutely  without  knowledge  or  recollection  of  his  attack 
on  the  Kruboys.  I  have  subsequently  known  other  cases  of 
Indians — the  Tamils  originally  came  to  Ceylon  from  India — in 
East  Africa  being  seized  with  murderous  frenzies  when  in  Black- 
water  fever  delirium,  who  otherwise  had  previously  borne  the 
reputation  of  an  unblemished  tranquillity  of  disposition.  Cer- 
tainly this  young  man  who  had  been  more  than  two  years  in  my 
employment — East  Africa,  England,  West  Africa — was  quiet, 
self-effacing,  cheerful  and  rather  studious,  and  never  gave  any 
signs  of  temper  or  inclination  to  violence  till  he  was  seized  with 
this  paroxysm  of  fever.  He  was  a  Roman  Catholic,  as  are  so 
many  of  the  Tamils  of  South  India  and  Ceylon,  and  had  received 

among  them,  but  it  may  be  induced  by  quite  other  diseases.  Professor  Koch 
of  Germany,  asked  for  a  diagnosis  when  this  malady  was  beginning  to 
slay  first  hundreds  then  thousands  in  all  Tropical  Africa,  offered  the  opinion 
that  it  was  the  result  of  overdoses  of  quinine.  It  is  sufficient  to  say  that 
there  are  no  grounds  for  such  an  explanation.  Yet  after  some  forty 
years  of  struggle  with  this  fell  disease — still  the  most  deadly  in  Africa — 
exponents  of  maladies  are  still  uncertain  as  to  its  nature  and  affinities. 


THE  STORY  OF  MY  LIFE 


157 


a  good  education.  He  spoke  English  perfectly  and  could  write  it 
as  well ;  his  French  was  nearly  as  good ;  he  knew  Hindostani  and 
some  Arabic,  and  in  East  Africa  had  learned  Swahili;  he  had 
acquired  a  good  deal  of  knowledge  about  botanical  collecting, 
could  skin  birds  efficiently,  keep  accounts,  steer  a  boat,  and  mend 
clothes. 

So  it  can  be  imagined  that  the  loss  of  his  services  under  such 
conditions  utterly  disgruntled  my  plans.  He  had  been  the  cause 
of  the  death  of  one  of  the  best  Krumen  I  have  known,  Grando; 
who  outlived  the  attack  five  days,  kept  his  wits  and  quiet 
demeanor  to  the  end;  and  in  dying,  just  after  he  had  in  a  low 
voice  reiterated  his  opinion :  "Dem  India  boy,  massa ;  he  no  mean 
bad ;  you  lefif  him  go"  brought  home  to  me,  as  many  a  later  cir- 
cumstance has  done,  what  a  good  fellow  the  Negro  can  be. 

Yet  the  Tamil  steward's  place  was  soon  supplied  in  great 
measure.  Mr.  Pinnock,  the  West  Indian  missionary  at  Victoria, 
a  great  friend  of  mine  in  those  days  and  fellow  student  in  Bantu, 
suggested  as  a  person  to  take  the  place  of  the  Tamil  factotum  a 
Negro  named  Solomon  Davies,  a  former  "Mission  boy."  Solo- 
mon, who  in  default  of  other  employment  had  turned  fisherman, 
was  produced.  He  was  most  unattractive  to  the  eye,  and  did 
not  seem  to  be  of  African  origin,  though  almost  a  burlesque  of 
the  Negro  type — squash  nose,  prominent  eyes,  thick  everted  lips. 
He  was  over  six  feet  in  ungainly  height,  had  bulging  knees  and 
very  long  arms.  When  he  smiled  his  teeth  though  sound  were 
spaced  and  the  tongue  seemed  too  large  for  the  mouth.  But,  as  I 
say,  "when  he  smiled" ;  and  Solomon  was  always  smiling  as 
though  no  distress  could  diminish  his  confidence  that  things 
would  turn  out  all  right.  The  smile  conquered  me  in  the  very- 
act  of  peevishly  explaining  he  could  not  possibly  do. 

I  secured  a  treasure:  one  of  the  faithfullest  souls  who  ever 
stood  by  me  in  Africa.  He  was  very  quiet  and  unloquacious  as 
regards  speech,  but  there  were  few  things  he  could  not  do,  or 
attempt  to  do,  and  probably  succeed  in  doing.  He  spoke  and 
wrote  excellent  English  and  was  a  keen  reader  in  his  small 
amount  of  spare  time.   He  was  sufficiently  interested  in  the  Bible 


158 


THE  STORY  OF  MY  LIFE 


in  those  ancient  days  to  have  saved  up  the  money  and  besought 
from  the  Mission  the  necessary  intervention  to  secure  him  an 
early  copy  of  the  Revised  Version.  I  have  Solomon's  Bible 
beside  me  here  and  always  refer  to  it  when  I  want  biblical  infor- 
mation. He  never  introduced  religion  into  his  conversation, 
never  made  it  the  excuse  for  neglecting  work.  When  my  house 
on  Mondole  Island  was  finished  he  kept  it  always  awaiting  me 
during  my  frequent  absences.  He  could  cook  me  simple  meals  if 
I  had  left  the  Accra  cook  at  Old  Calabar.  He  could  by  transla- 
tion help  me  in  questioning  strange,  wild  natives  of  the  interior 
as  to  their  languages  and  dialects,  though  for  this  purpose  I 
engaged  a  young  Mission  student  from  the  Duala  country,  Beba 
Bell. 

Well :  one  day — to  finish  off  Solomon's  story  now — when  I 
had  returned  to  Mondole  early  in  1888,  for  rest  and  repair,  Solo- 
mon advised  me  he  ought  to  go  across  to  the  Bimbia  peninsula 
to  cut  some  heavy  timber  for  making  a  small  bridge  on  the  road 
down  to  the  sea :  he  would  take  the  available  Kruboys  with  him 
and  two  long  and  large  canoes  to  transport  the  timber.  I  said 
"All  right,"  never  thinking  there  was  danger  in  the  passage. 
Oddly  enough  there  was  staying  with  me  at  the  time  the  English 
builder  who  had  put  up  my  house,  and  who  had  been  making 
subsequently  some  additions  to  the  Consulate  at  Old  Calabar. 
His  work  was  finished  and  he  was  awaiting  a  steamer  to  take 
him  home.  We  lunched;  we  dipped  into  the  mail  just  arrived 
from  England;  we  sat  on  the  veranda  of  the  first  floor  and 
perhaps  snoozed.  Presently  about  three  I  woke  or  became  atten- 
tive and  saw  Solomon  running  noiselessly  up  the  outer  steps  on 
to  the  veranda  at  its  farther  end.  He  never  looked  at  me  but 
disappeared  through  the  door  that  led  to  the  dining-room.  Pres- 
ently the  builder  remarked  that  Solomon  seemed  a  long  time  com- 
ing back.  "Oh,"  I  said,  "he  is  back.  I  saw  him  go  into  the 
dining-room."  It  was,  howeved,  tea  time  and  I  wanted  tea.  I 
rang  a  bell.  No  one  came.  Presently,  about  half-past  four,  four 
drenched  Kruboys  appeared,  ashen-colored  with  fright  and  ex- 
haustion. .   .  .  They  stood  below  with  a  visible  tremble  passing 


THE  STORY  OF  MY  LIFE 


159 


through  their  limbs.  "What  is  it?"  I  asked,  scenting  disaster. 
"Oh,  Massa!"  and  in  their  distress  and  exhaustion  their  broken 
Enghsh  deserted  them. 

I  went  down  as  they  had  flung  themselves  on  the  ground  and 
seemed  too  exhausted  to  come  up.  We  gathered  from  them  by 
degrees  their  tidings.  They  had  got  the  timber  of  which  they 
went  in  search,  but  had  overloaded  the  canoes.  A  sudden  squall 
struck  the  canoes  in  the  brief  passage  over  the  open  sea.  The 
one  with  Solomon  in  it  had  capsized  and  although  it  was  eventu- 
ally righted  and  even  brought  into  port,  Solomon  and  two  of  the 
Kruboys  were  never  seen  again.  Either  they  were  seized  by 
sharks  which  frequented  the  sea  in  the  outer  part  of  Ambas  Bay, 
or  they  had  been  struck  and  stunned  by  the  logs;  for  all  of  them 
were  good  swimmers,  Solomon  being  deemed  by  us  to  be  am- 
phibious. As  far  as  I  could  make  out  the  poor  man  had  died 
just  about  the  time  I  saw  him  come  up  on  to  the  veranda  and 
pass  silently  into  the  dining-room  at  the  end  of  the  passage. 

This  truly  beautiful  island  of  Mondole,  so  conveniently  situ- 
ated for  a  Governor's  survey  of  the  Cameroons,  so  apart  from 
marsh  or  swamp  (and  the  swamps  bordering  the  Cameroons  estu- 
ary at  its  broadest  must  have  been  a  sore  trial  to  the  Germans  in 
making  this  their  government  center,  so  that  they  eventually 
moved  to  the  mountainside  at  Buea)  acquired  in  my  time  a  sin- 
ister reputation  for  ill  luck  and  misfortune.  The  views  from  it 
in  all  directions  were  superb — the  ghost-like  island  of  Fernando 
Poo  westward  of  Mondole,  rising  ten  thousand  feet  from  a  blue, 
white-breakered  sea;  the  superb  range  of  the  Cameroons  to  the 
east  towering  thirteen  thousand  feet  skyward  from  the  shimmer- 
ing tranquillity  of  Ambas  Bay.  Huge,  fronded  trees  with  but- 
tressed trunks,  graceful  and  lofty  oil  palms  grew  from  the  water's 
edge  up  to  the  summit  of  Mondole,  six  or  seven  hundred  feet 
above  the  sea.  On  the  uppermost  part  there  was  a  grassy  plateau, 
and  here  were  situated  the  houses  of  the  natives,  about  a  hundred 
in  number,  quiet,  pleasant  folk  of  the  A-kwile  or  Ba-kwire  stock. 
My  house  was  situated  in  a  clearing  of  the  forest  on  a  minor  shelf 


160 


THE  STORY  OF  MY  LIFE 


about  half  a  mile  from  the  village.  A  rather  steep,  winding  road 
was  cut  through  the  forest  down  to  the  beach  on  the  east  side, 
where  there  was  almost  a  natural  port  formed  by  an  outstretch- 
ing reef  over  which  the  breakers  foamed.  Inside  this  reef  my 
smart  man  o'  war's  boat  was  kept  in  safety.  (Sailing  this  boat, 
I  made  some  surprising  journeys  over  the  open  sea,  to  Old  Cala- 
bar, even  to  Bonny  in  the  Niger  Delta,  to  various  points  on  the 
Cameroons  coast,  and  occasionally  to  Fernando  Poo.) 

My  Consulate  at  Mondole  was  a  much  better-lighted  building 
than  the  earlier-designed  house  at  Old  Calabar.  I  had  been  at 
some  expense  to  furnish  it  nicely.  There  were  a  "blue"  room,  a 
"red"  room,  a  "green"  room;  a  quite  pretty  garden  round  it  was 
arranged  and  planted  by  Solomon ;  there  were  a  number  of  inter- 
esting books  in  the  library  and  abundant  supplies  of  newspapers. 
These  and  the  books  were  sent  out  to  me  every  mail  by  my  eldest 
brother,  who  for  some  sixteen  years  of  my  Consular  work  in 
Africa  supplied  me  with  literature  to  read. 

But  romantic  and  eventually  comfortable  as  was  my  retreat  on 
this  lovely  island,  it  proved  impracticable  for  the  very  compli- 
cated functions  I  had  to  fulfil,  even  when  Consul  Hewett  re- 
mained at  his  Old  Calabar  post — which  owing  to  ill-health  he  did 
not  occupy  after  the  spring  of  1887.  I  had  to  make  frequent 
journeys  to  the  Cameroons  River  and  southern  coast  to  look  into 
the  affairs  of  British  merchants,  I  had  until  1887  much  adminis- 
trative work  in  the  British  Cameroons,  which  ceased  to  be  British 
in  1887  and  did  not  return  to  us  till  the  Great  War — 1916.  I 
had  to  visit  Fernando  Poo,  an  island  governed  by  Spain  but  still 
containing  British  merchants  and  British  West  Indian  mission- 
aries. (Apart  from  Consular  duties  here,  the  indigenous  native 
language  in  three  or  four  dialects  was  a  form  of  Bantu  of  the 
highest  interest  to  me.)  With  Hewett's  retum  home  in  April, 
1887,  I  became  Acting  Consul  for  what  would  now  be  called 
southern  Nigeria,  and  had  to  reside  principally  at  Old  Calabar 
and  virtually  govern  the  Niger  Delta.  So  my  visits  to  the  truly 
lovely — yet  ill-fated — island  of  Mondole  were  only  occasional 
and  seldom  lasted  longer  than  a  week  at  a  time. 


THE  STORY  OF  MY  LIFE 


161 


Mondole  to  superstitious  people  of  those  days  might  really 
seem  to  have  lain  under  a  curse.  To  begin  with  (I  was  informed) 
it  had  in  some  way  caused  the  death  of  my  predecessor  as  Vice 
Consul,  whose  name  escapes  my  memory.  He  had  been  a  friend 
of  my  brother's,  and  I,  having  already  visited  the  Cameroons  and 
Niger  Delta,  was  called  in  to  advise  him  as  to  where  he  should  fix 
his  residence  in  the  Cameroons.  I  suggested  Mondole  Island, 
which  I  had  then  only  seen  in  the  distance.  He  went  there  soon 
after  his  arrival,  inspected  its  possibilities  as  a  port  and  a  resi- 
dence, returned  to  the  "hulk"  on  which  he  was  lodged  and 
boarded  at  Cameroons  River  and  forthwith  died  of  Black-water 
fever.  Then  in  my  case  there  were  the  two  deaths  of  Grando 
the  Kruman  and  Solomon  Davies,  and  many  other  minor  misfor- 
tunes. Rogozinski,  the  Polish  explorer,  had  left  behind  him  a 
large  tom  cat.  This  cat  took  to  a  wild  life  after  his  abandonment 
and  grew  to  an  abnormal  size — or  so  it  appeared  when  one  saw 
him  by  moonlight.  He  had  vowed  seemingly  that  no  other  cat 
should  occupy  his  former  home;  so  every  time  I  introduced  cat 
or  kitten  (which  I  had  to  do  to  keep  the  rats  down)  Rogozinski's 
"tom"  appeared  sooner  or  later  on  a  moonlight  night  and  did  to 
death,  amid  frightful,  witch-sabbath  yowlings,  my  introduced 
feline.  Then  there  were  a  pair  of  Tree  Cobras  ^ — one  of  the 
deadliest  of  snakes — which  established  themselves  in  a  much- 
shrouded  tree  half  way  up  the  roadway  leading  from  house  to 
beach.  Whenever  I  had  no  gun  in  my  hand  I  saw  them ;  when- 
ever I  was  thus  armed  they  were  invisible.  White  visitors  from 
ships  became  quite  nervous  about  paying  me  a  visit.  I  have  had 
guests  who  reached  the  house  but  were  then  afraid  to  leave  it;  so 
that  I  had  to  make  another  and  much  more  expensive  road  to 
reach  the  beach.  I  had  the  snake-tree  cut  down — a  very  jumpy 
business;  but  the  pair  of  snakes  then  transferred  themselves  to 
one  of  my  outbuildings.  Only  a  few  weeks  before  I  left  Mondole 
for  ever  these  Tree  Cobras  were  killed  in  a  concerted  attack  made 
on  them  by  a  gentleman — my  clerk — who  lived  in  the  Mondole 
Consulate  during  my  lengthy  absences. 

1  Dendraspis. 


162 


THE  STORY  OF  MY  LIFE 


And  this  clerk — personally  an  agreeable,  companionable  man 
of  good  education — imported  a  troublous  incident  into  Mondole. 
I  had  found  him  in  1886  leading  a  rather  unhappy,  shiftless  life 
at  Old  Calabar,  employed  intermittently  as  a  bookkeeper.  He 
had  married  (they  are  both  dead  now,  so  I  can  write  freely)  the 
rather  elderly  daughter  of  a  missionary  with  the  strange  name  of 
Dyeball.  His  own  name  I  have  quite  forgotten.  I  badly  wanted 
clerical  assistance  when  my  Consular  business  increased,  so  I 

engaged  Mr.  and  took  him  to  Mondole.    He  was  reserved 

about  his  own  affairs,  but  I  gathered  that  his  marriage  had  not 

turned  out  happily.   On  the  other  hand  Mrs.   (nee  Dyeball) 

had  relations  and  friends  at  Old  Calabar  in  the  large  missionary 
colony.  She,  in  fact,  returned  to  mission  work.  There  he  will- 
ingly left  her. 

My  own  appearances  at  Mondole  were  erratic  and  usually 
brief.  One  day  I  was  landed  there  from  a  gunboat.  I  was  look- 
ing forward  to  a  week  of  complete  rest,  and  the  quiet  presence  of 

Mr.  would  be  no  deterrent;  for  he  was  of  that  sensible  type 

which  expected  no  conversation  if  you  had  nothing  to  say. 

Imagine  therefore  my  dismay  when  I  ran  up  the  steps  of  my 
Consulate  to  hear  a  variety  of  voices  from  the  drawing-room  and 

to  find  Mrs.    installed  there  as  housemistress,  giving  a  tea 

party  to  about  six  guests  from  the  mainland,  a  German  officer  and 
men  and  women  missionaries.  They  were  all  nice  people,  worthy 
of  being  entertained,  and  were  paying  calls  of  politeness,  evi- 
dently deeming  that  Mrs.  was  "at  home."    She  received  me 

in  some  such  manner,  with  quiet  friendliness,  telling  me  I  should 
find  my  room  quite  ready,  and  would  I  mind  as  I  went  out  touch- 
ing the  bell  for  a  servant  to  bring  a  fresh  cup  and  saucer.  My 
hasty  and  angry  toilet  completed,  I  did  indeed  touch  a  bell  or 
clap  hands  or  make  whatever  was  the  signal  in  vogue  for  attract- 
ing Solomon's  attention.  He  on  coming  informed  me  with 
rolling  eyes  that  Mrs.    had  arrived  a  month  ago  and  in- 

formed him  she  was  taking  up  her  residence  there  with  her 
husband  and  was  to  be  recognized  as  the  mistress  of  the  house. 

I  remained  in  my  bedroom  till  her  husband  returned  from  out- 


THE  STORY  OF  MY  LIFE 


163 


door  work.  Indignant  questions  in  a  suppressed  voice.  Embar- 
rassed answers  .  .  .  his  wife  had  come;  the  steamer  after 
landing  her  had  gone  on  its  way ;  what  was  he  to  do  ?  .   .  . 

I  wrote  a  concise  note,  informing  her  that  a  continued  stay 
would  be  inconvenient  and  that  I  must  ask  her  to  leave  by  the 
next  northward-bound  steamer,  with  or  without  her  husband. 
The  husband,  on  his  earnest  pleading,  I  allowed  to  stay  on,  but 
the  wife  returned  to  Old  Calabar,  apparently  without  bearing  me 
any  particular  malice,  for  I  met  her  there  shortly  afterwards  and 
found  her  once  more  working  with  the  missionaries. 


CHAPTER  VIII 


In  the  month  of  June,  1886,  being  still  rather  unwell,  Consul 
Hewett  advised  me  to  take  a  month's  hoHday  and  explore  Cam- 
eroons  Mountain.  I  turned  to  this  with  zest  and  fitted  out  a  good 
expedition  on  a  small  scale.  The  first  part  of  the  ascent  was  very- 
hot  in  the  dense,  verdure-enshrouded  forest.  The  vegetation  was 
magnificent,  one  might  almost  say  awe-inspiring  .  .  ,  perhaps 
never  have  I  seen  it  more  astonishingly  developed.  Yet  it  did  not 
produce  on  me  the  vivid  sensations  of  delight  at  its  wonderment 
and  entrancing  beauty  which  I  afterwards  experienced  on  Ruwen- 
zori  and  in  Liberia.  Perhaps  the  reason  was  a  very  humble  one. 
Some  kindly  French  priests — how  they  came  to  be  there  I  can  not 
say — pressed  on  my  acceptance  a  large  supply  of  a  cooling  drink 
made  of  pineapple  juice.  I  took  a  swig  of  this  when  at  my  thirst- 
iest, and  it  seemed  so  supremely  delicious  that  in  a  short  time  I 
had  drunk  the  entire  contents  of  the  demi-john  entrusted  to  one 
of  my  porters.  There  followed,  as  I  continued  to  climb,  a  racking 
headache  and  severe  vomiting ;  so  that  I  reached  at  last  our  camp 
at  Mann's  Spring  (some  seven  thousand  feet)  feeling  very  ill. 
However  the  next  morning  I  was  none  the  worse  and  during  the 
succeeding  two  thousand  feet  of  ascent  the  forest  scenery  became 
so  beautiful  with  orchids  below  and  veils  of  Old  Man's  beard  * 

^  This  Orchilla-weed  (RocccUa)  tliat  drapes  the  Tropical  African  forests 
above  a  certain  altitude  is  a  lichen;  the  almost  exactly  similar  "Spanish  Moss" 
of  Tropical  America  (Tillandsia)  is  a  relation  of  the  Pineapple.  Its  true 
character  as  a  Bromeliad  is  only  revealed  at  the  time  of  its  blossom  when 
it  produces  small  purplish-blue  flowers.  Another  parasite  on  trees  very 
similar  in  growth  is  Rhtpsalis,  a  cactus  found  on  the  trunks  and  branches 
of  trees  in  Trinidad  and  Brazil  and  also — amazing  to  relate — in  Ceylon.  It 
is  the  only  member  of  the  cactus  family  which  has  by  apparently  natural 
means  transported  itself  out  of  America  to  tropical  Asia.  The  prickly  pear 
(Opnntia)  which  is  now  such  a  prominent  feature  in  the  landscapes  of 
the  Mediterranean  Basin,  Palestine  and  the  Persian  Gulf,  has  an  edible 
fruit  and  was  brought  by  the  Spaniards  to  the  Old  World  in  the  sixteenth 
century;  but  it  is  hard  to  say  what  means  conveyed  the  Rhipsalis  from  South 
America  to  Ceylon. 

164 


THE  STORY  OF  MY  LIFE 


165 


above,  screening  the  glowing,  golden  green  of  the  occasional 
inlets  of  sunshine  on  the  foliage,  that  in  the  cooler  atmosphere 
I  seemed  invigorated  and  untirable. 

We  reached  at  last  a  spot  where  the  guides  revealed  a  pool  or 
spring  of  water.  It  was  at  about  nine  thousand  three  hundred 
feet  elevation  and  I  do  not  think  it  had  been  known  to  previous 
travelers,  the  general  assumption  in  those  days  being  that  there 
was  no  reliable  water  supply  above  Mann's  Spring. 

The  site  of  the  nine-thousand-feet  high  camping  place  was 
truly  a  beautiful  one.  You  could  choose  your  position  just  above 
the  edge  of  the  forest,  amid  short  grass,  with  the  grassy  craters, 
large  and  small,  ranged  above  you  to  the  northeast.  Your  view 
southward  extended  over  the  Cameroons  estuary,  and,  beyond 
this  silvery  expanse,  into  Unknown  Africa,  toward  mountain 
ranges  as  yet,  in  those  days,  unreached  by  Europeans.  Westward 
lay  the  blue  Atlantic  with  a  crinkled  surface  where  the  great 
rollers  were  not  stemmed  by  the  purple  island  of  Fernando  Poo. 
This  island,  culminating  in  a  volcanic  cone  ten  thousand  feet  in 
height,  seemed  to  lie  in  the  middle  of  the  sky,  and  the  sun  to  set 
in  crimson,  yellow  and  greenish  blue  behind  its  screen.  There 
was  a  pleasant  scent  at  all  times  from  the  aromatic  shrubs  and 
the  bushes  of  heather.  You  seemed  removed  above  the  world 
and  all  its  worries ;  yet  had  the  spectacle  of  its  forests  and  plains, 
its  islands,  rivers,  hills  and  man's  activities  spread  before  you.  I 
felt  that  some  such  site  as  this,  in  the  grasslands  at  nine  thousand 
feet,  ought  to  be  the  capital  city  of  West  Central  Africa,  domi- 
nating the  Niger  Delta — just  in  sight  on  the  northwest — and  the 
great  rivers  and  palm  forests  of  the  Cameroons.  The  last-men- 
tioned— the  "great  rivers  of  the  Cameroons" — were  not  then 
discovered,  yet  they  were  in  loops  and  bends  visible  to  me  on  a 
very  clear  afternoon,  though  their  entry  into  the  map  was  to  be  an 
afifair  of  three  years  ahead. 

How  I  came  to  be  so  lucky  as  to  make  this  discovery  (through 
native  guides)  of  the  stream  or  spring  of  water  at  an  altitude  of 
nine  thousand  three  hundred  feet,  I  do  not  remember.  This 
water  supply  had  not  been  known  hitherto,  and  all  the  explora- 


166 


THE  STORY  OF  MY  LIFE 


tion  of  the  grasslands  of  the  Cameroons  had  been  hindered  by 
the  scarcity  of  water.  No  spring  had  hitherto  been  known 
higher  than  that  at  seven  thousand  three  hundred  feet  discovered 
and  used  by  Gustav  Mann  the  Anglo-German  botanist  (after- 
wards celebrated  for  his  Himalayan  floral  discoveries).  I  sup- 
pose I  learned  of  this  conveniently-placed  rill  of  water  above 
nine  thousand  feet  from  the  Bakwiri  or  Buea  people  who  came 
with  me.  It  was  just  on  the  verge  of  the  grasslands  of  the  upper 
zone. 

From  this  elevated  camp,  in  a  delicious  climate,  like  southern 
Scotland  in  June,  I  ranged  unhindered  above  the  forest  up  to  an 
altitude  of  eleven  thousand  feet.  My  indigenous  porters  and  my 
Krumen  ascended  as  high  as  the  last  mentioned  altitude  without 
much  protestation.  Big  fires  at  night  atoned  for  the  nightly 
frost;  much  excitement  and  wonder  was  caused  to  the  Krumen 
by  the  freezing  of  water;  during  the  daytime  they  were  kept 
considerably  on  the  move,  hunting  for  specimens  of  all  kinds. 
But  asked  to  accompany  me  to  the  base  of  the  highest  crater — a 
splendid-looking  object  made  conspicuous  by  its  brilliant  coloring 
— green,  deep  bluish-gray,  ruddy,  whitish,  black  and  yellow — 
they  resolutely  declined.  The  last  two  thousand  feet  of  the  final 
ascent  was  the  home  of  a  demi-god,  a  terrible  being  in  appear- 
ance when  he  presented  his  front  to  you.  He  was  not  so 
formidable  (said  the  natives  of  the  mountain)  if  you  could  get 
behind  him;  he  was  then  seen  to  be  a  made-up  mechanism.  But 
only  one  man  in  a  thousand — so  to  speak — could  slip  behind 
without  being  detected  and  burnt-up  by  one  malevolent  eye-glance. 

So,  finding  persuasion  useless  I  set  out  alone  one  really  fine 
day,  when  there  were  no  obstructing  clouds,  to  make  the  final 
ascent.  I  had  only  about  two  thousand  feet  to  climb,  and  the  first 
thousand  were  easy  going,  over  short  heather  and  occasional 
streams  of  dead  ashes.  Unfortunately,  however,  the  view  of  my 
camp  was  obstructed  by  the  numerous  short  craters,  like  the  scabs 
of  dead  pimples.  This  I  did  not  realize  at  the  time,  but  being 
alone  and  guideless  I  was  losing  my  way.  I  reached  the  base  of 
the  great  crater  and  tackled  its  climb.  This  was  only  difficult 
where  one  had  to  mount  through  loose  cinders.   At  last  I  reached 


THE  STORY  OF  MY  LIFE 


167 


the  grassy  edge,  the  final  summit,  and  looked  down  eastwards  on 
a  much  filled-in  crater  of  considerable  size.  I  found  my  way  to 
a  cairn  of  stones  and  within  this  were  several  glass — I  think, 
soda-water — bottles  with  removable  caps.  These  two  or  three 
bottles  contained  the  names  of  previous  climbers  of  the  Victoria 
peak,  the  highest  point.  The  earliest  were  the  members  of  the 
Richard  Burton  party — Burton's  own  signature.  Alfred  Saker 
the  missionary,  a  Spanish  official  from  Fernando  Poo.  The  latest 
bottle  into  which  I  pushed  my  own  record,  name,  and  date,  con- 
tained the  signature  of  a  Swede  who  had  ascended  the  mountain 
two  or  three  years  earlier. 

I  then  proceeded  to  boil  water  and  ascertain  its  temperature  by 
the  thermometer;  so  as  to  vie  with  others  who  had  tried  thus  to 
determine  the  altitude;  besides  glancing  at  the  record  of  my 
aneroid  barometer.  (I  must  have  looked  a  curious  object  slung 
with  all  these  instruments  and  furnished  with  a  bird  gun  and  a 
long  stout  stick.)  My  record  as  far  as  I  can  remember  was  about 
13,350  feet.  All  this  time,  though  I  did  not  realize  it,  the  sun 
was  setting  in  such  glory  and  beauty  of  color  as  I  have  never  else- 
where witnessed.  But  as  this  was  seen  from  an  altitude  of  thir- 
teen thousand  feet,  behind  the  purple  mass  of  Fernando  Poo 
Island,  I  did  not  realize  at  first  that  the  sun  zvas  setting :  I  vaguely 
guessed  the  time  to  be  about  four  o'clock.  Looking,  however,  at 
my  watch  showed  me  the  true  hour  to  be  a  quarter  to  six.  In 
another  three-quarters  of  an  hour  it  would  be  night — theoretically 
— though  a  full  moon  would  rise  and  light  up  the  scene.  Having 
ascertained  the  boiling  point  of  water,  taken  temperatures,  and 
concluded  other  matters  relative  to  ascertaining  the  altitude  of 
the  highest  point  on  the  crater  rim,  I  at  length  descended  the 
crater  slopes  in  a  rather  exhilarating  slide,  being  prevented  from 
rolling  over  by  the  apparatus  with  which  I  was  slung.  Arrived 
at  the  lava  bed  below  I  made  for  the  direction  in  which  our  eleven 
thousand  feet  camp  lay ;  but  the  intervening  craters  and  craterlets 
confused  me.  I  could  see  no  sign  of  camp,  no  lights  or  fires.  I 
shouted — my  voice  sounded  very  thin  and  feeble — there  was  no 
response.  I  must  have  lost  my  way  or  my  camp  had  been  re- 
moved. 


168 


THE  STORY  OF  MY  LIFE 


The  situation  now — looking  back  on  it  many  years  afterwards 
• — seems  to  me  one  that  should  have  created  alarm ;  but  I  do  not 
seem  to  have  been  very  perturbed.  I  decided,  instead  of  wander- 
ing about  the  vast  expanse  of  the  crater-studded  slopes  of  the 
huge  mountain  above  the  sharply-defined  forest  belt,  to  seek  to 
find  our  more  permanent  camp  at  nine  thousand  three  hundred 
feet.    Here  there  would  be  quite  half  my  expedition, 

I  therefore  lay  down  for  a  while  on  the  heather  to  rest,  envel- 
oped in  a  rain  coat,  for  the  dew  was  heavy.  As  I  lay  here 
perfectly  still  (the  altitude  was  something  below  ten  thousand 
feet)  I  saw  a  wonderful  sight.  From  behind  a  small  crater  there 
walked  out  into  the  moonlight  a  troop  of  six  or  seven  Bongo 
tragelaphs ;  superb  creatures,  bulkier  than  the  Kudu.  The  Bongo 
in  those  days  was  only  known  to  me  through  Paul  du  Chaillu's 
imperfect  specimen  in  the  British  Museum  and  the  illustrations 
given  of  it  in  his  book.  What  I  saw  coming  toward  me  I  mentally 
classified  as  a  very  large,  regularly  white-striped  Bush-buck,  some- 
thing altogether  new.  I  had  only  a  small  bird  gun  with  me,  so  any 
idea  of  shooting  was  out  of  the  question.  The  Bongo  snififed  a 
little  as  they  looked  in  my  direction ;  but  were  not  alarmed  and 
presently  lowered  their  heads  to  feed.  Gradually  they  strolled 
and  munched  till  they  wound  out  of  sight  behind  another  crater. 

I  then  bestirred  myself  again ;  rose — very  stiff  with  fatigue  and 
cold — and  floundered  down  the  mountain  side  till  I  reached  the 
borders  of  the  great  forest.  I  took  here  another  rest  till  it  was 
dawn,  not  liking  to  enter  the  woods  in  an  imperfect  light.  I  had 
of  course  directed  my  course  toward  where  I  believed  my  perma- 
nent camp  to  lie.  When  the  dawn  came  I  looked  at  my  aneroid 
and  saw  the  elevation  was  approximately  six  thousand  five  hun- 
dred feet.  The  forest  in  this  direction  did  not  mount  so  high  as 
elsewhere.  I  entered  it  however  and  hit  off  some  path,  possibly  a 
track  made  by  elephants.  A  great  screeching  roar  made  my  heart 
stand  still.  A  few  yards  ahead  of  me  was  a  very  large  ape.  At  the 
time  I  decided  it  must  be  a  gorilla,  but  it  was  probably  a  chimpan- 
zee— which  swung  from  a  huge  limb  of  a  tree  and  flopped  on  to 
the  ground.  I  stood  stock  still  wondering  whether  to  fire  off  my 
bird  gun  or  not.  However  a  minute's  reflection  decided  the  ape  to 


THE  STORY  OF  MY  LIFE 


169 


disappear.  I  must  have  halted  a  quarter  of  an  hour,  in  a  mixture 
of  amazement,  alarm  and  indecision.  Then  I  moved  cautiously 
forward.  For  some  distance  I  met  nothing;  then  there  was  a 
distant  snap  of  a  twig  and  into  a  patch  of  sunlight  stepped  a 
naked  man  with  a  yellowish-brown  skin. 

I  should  perhaps  have  been  more  alarmed  by  this  unknown 
savage  than  by  any  anthropoid  ape,  but  after  my  isolation  from 
my  kind  for  twenty-four  hours  the  sight  of  him  seemed  my  salva- 
tion. I  called  out  loudly  a  few  words  of  the  Bakwiri  language ; 
he  replied  in  a  somewhat  different  speech  but  his  tone  seemed 
friendly  and  we  advanced  to  meet  each  other.  Then  he  extended 
a  hand  and  I  hurriedly  did  the  same  and  grasped  his  yellow  paw. 
After  that  speech  failed  me.  I  could  not  recollect  any  more 
Bakwiri  for  the  moment,  but  indicated  by  gestures  that  I  was  lost 
and  looking  for  my  camp.  He  replied  reassuringly  (in  tone) 
and  made  himself  my  guide.  Eagerly  I  followed,  and  after  an 
hour's  descent  through  an  extraordinary  tangle  we  reached  a 
village  which  must  have  been  very  near  the  site  of  the  after- 
established  German  capital  of  Buea. 

In  those  days  the  Buea  people  lived  just  within  the  verge  of 
the  small  territory  of  Cameroons  Mountain  annexed  by  the  Brit- 
ish Government  in  1884.  They  had  fully  realized  this  fact,  albeit 
they  were  nearly  complete  savages,  the  women  mostly  naked,  the 
men  wnth  a  mere  vestige  of  clothing — a  dried  leaf  stuck  into 
their  girdle ;  and  they  drew  a  sharp  distinction  between  "Jamani" 
and  "Inglisi,"  so  that  I  was  perfectly  safe  in  their  hands.  They 
gave  me  bananas  to  eat,  the  opportunity  of  a  good  rest ;  and  then 
about  mid-day  my  original  friend  whom  I  had  encountered  soon 
after  seeing  the  chimpanzee  set  out  to  guide  me  up  the  mountain 
slope  to  the  camp  at  nine  thousand  three  hundred  feet.  My  men 
here  gave  vent  to  quite  touching  rejoicings  at  my  return.  The 
party  which  should  have  accompanied  me  to  the  summit  had  just 
returned  from  the  camp  at  eleven  thousand  feet  with  a  terrible 
tale  of  how  I  had  been  overcome  and  probably  murdered  by  the 
demon  Obasi  who  defended  his  last  two  thousand  feet  of  climb 
from  sacrilege;  when  I  limped  into  the  enclosure  to  throw  scorn 
on  their  story. 


170 


THE  STORY  OF  MY  LIFE 


This  happy  month  of  exploration  and  natural  history  collection 
was  succeeded  by  a  disagreeable  episode  on  the  sea  coast.  The 
German  authorities,  prompted  by  the  drunken,  irascible,  bullying 
nephew  of  Princess  Bismarck,  accused  me  of  having  traveled 
through  their  borderland — the  slopes  of  Cameroons  Mountain — 
"urging  the  natives  to  rise  against  them" !  To  protest  against 
my  supposed  action  they  themselves  had  sent  a  force  on  to  British 
territory  to  occupy  the  town  of  Victoria  opposite  Mondole  Island. 

There  was  not,  of  course,  a  fragment  of  truth  in  these  asser- 
tions. I  replied,  denying  the  accusation  but  with  a  careful  ab- 
sence of  heated  terms.  I  was  then  told  that  if  I  left  Mondole 
Island  and  set  foot  on  the  mainland  (British  territory  then)  I 
should  be  arrested  and  put  in  prison.  I  referred  the  whole  matter 
to  Consul  Hewett  to  telegraph  home.  The  result  was  speedily 
that  Lord  Rosebery,  satisfied  of  the  total  absence  of  truth  in  the 
accusation,  insisted  that  a  public  apology  should  be  offered  me  by 
the  German  authorities  and  that  their  police  should  at  once  quit 
Victoria.  Accordingly  I  had  to  go  in  full  uniform  to  the  Cam- 
eroons River,  to  "Duala,"  as  the  German  headquarters  was 
beginning  to  be  called,  and  there  receive  the  amende  honorable. 

This  business  was  made  half-farcical,  half-disagreeable.  I  had 
to  sit  in  von  Puttkammer's  sanctum  (a  former  Baptist  missionary 
house)  in  the  stifling-hot  Consular  uniform  from  three  p.m.  till 
six,  being  offered  and  obliged  to  imbibe  about  five  different  kinds 
of  wine  or  cocktail.  Then  at  six,  the  Governor,  Baron  von 
Soden,  in  the  fullest  uniform  summoned  me  to  his  residence,  and 
in  the  presence  of  a  hierarchy  of  officials  tendered  me  the  required 
apology,  with  many  clickings  of  heels,  bows,  salutes  and  hand- 
shakes. For  the  first  and  only  time  in  my  life  I  was  half-tipsy 
and  could  think  of  no  German  sentence  to  proffer  in  appropriate 
reply.    So  I  bowed  my  head  and  uttered  meaningless  gurgles. 

Then  the  assembly  broke  up  and  the  Governor  became  more 
human.  As  his  officers  filed  out  he  unbuttoned  his  uniform  and 
swabbed  his  forehead  and  said,  "It  is  damnable  hot,  not  so?"  I 
agreed  with  vehemence.  Then  he  led  me  to  some  sanctum  and 
proffered  more  drinks.   I  pleaded  for  volume  and  no  alcohol,  and 


THE  STORY  OF  MY  LIFE 


171 


so  was  allowed  to  drink  several  soda  waters,  iced  with  ice  from 
the  gunboats ;  for  ice-making  was  not  to  begin  for  another  year. 
And  then,  as  I  lay  back  in  a  long  cane  chair  I  suppose  I  went  to 
sleep;  for  I  was  presently  awakened  in  the  semi-darkness  by  a 
Duala  servant  coming  in  with  a  lamp.  This  person — angel  in 
disguise — led  me  to  a  washing  room  where  I  undressed  and  had  a 
refreshing  sponge  bath.  After  this  I  again  donned  uniform  and 
was  conducted  to  a  veranda  where  the  assembling  guests  were 
absorbing  drinks — cocktails — before  dinner. 

However  the  worst  of  the  agony  seemed  to  be  over.  My  Eng- 
lish host  in  Cameroons  River  was  there,  trying  to  absorb  some- 
thing teetotal.  He  looked  at  me  quizically  and  said,  "I've  come 
to  see  you  home." 

We  sat  down  to  an  exceedingly  lengthy  dinner,  and  toasts 
seemed  to  me  to  begin  with  the  roast  turkey.  I  had  to  drink  or 
feign  to  drink  to  every  toast  and  make  speeches  to  some,  half  in 
German  half  in  English.  However  as  I  aroused  laughter  I  felt 
happier.  At  midnight  we  managed  to  get  away,  on  board  Allen's 
hulk  anchored  in  mid-river.  This  ancient  slave-trading  vessel 
furnished  in  reality  very  comfortable  quarters,  cool  and  quiet.  I 
slept  profoundly  and  awoke  the  next  morning  crippled  at  first  by 
an  appalling  headache ;  but  this  went  off  as  I  sat  up  in  bed  and 
sipped  two  cups  of  Allen's  delicious  tea,  served  with  goat's  milk. 

George  Allen — where  is  he  now  ? — was  a  remarkable  man,  who 
was  teetotal,  like  most  of  the  good  and  great  men  of  African 
fame.  He  came,  I  think,  from  Northumberland  and  represented 
more  than  one  trading  firm  in  the  Cameroons.  I  think  he  was  a 
good  trader,  but  he  evidently  yearned  to  be  in  Africa  following 
some  branch  of  science  only.  He  studied  the  local  languages  and 
folk-lore,  collected  butterflies,  and  kept  records  of  weather  and 
temperature.  Staying  with  him  on  his  hulk  was  a  real  pleasure 
as  he  had  an  excellent  library  on  board,  and  interesting  types  of 
native  frequented  his  store  as  he  gave  them  for  nothing  good 
medical  advice.  I  heard  from  him  some  ten  years  afterwards. 
He  wrote  from  South  Africa  and  sent  a  remarkable  collection  of 
photographs  from  Swaziland  and  the  Transvaal.   Then — silence. 


172 


THE  STORY  OF  MY  LIFE 


I  lay  stress  on  him  and  on  his  personality  because  there  were 
several  men  like  him  as  early  as  the  middle  'eighties  on  the  West 
African  coast,  utterly  dissimilar  from  the  character  ascribed  to 
the  "Palm  oil  ruffian"  imagined  and  described  by  some  tipsy 
British  newspaper-writer  of  those  days.  What  may  have  been 
the  character  of  British  traders  in  Upper  Guinea  in  that  period, 
I  can  not  say.  But  between  1882  and  1888  I  formed  a  high 
opinion  of  the  generality  of  British  merchants  and  clerks  who 
came  out  from  Liverpool,  Glasgow,  Newcastle,  Bristol  and  Bel- 
fast to  trade  in  the  Niger  Delta,  Cameroons  and  on  the  Congo 
coast. 

Lent  a  boat  and  canoes  by  Allen  I  went  on  a  very  interesting 
journey  up  the  Cameroons  or  Wuri  River  until  navigation  be- 
came impeded  by  rapids.  The  country  seemed  to  me  of  amazing 
interest.  The  foreground  was  often  swampy,  with  extravagant 
reeds  and  rushes;  and  water-lilies,  white,  blue  and  rose-tint, 
grouped  round  the  emergence  of  the  reed  stems.  Water-birds  of 
all  descriptions — gallinules  of  a  dwarf  species,  coots,  jaganas, 
teal,  and  tree-duck  scurried  in  and  out  of  the  labyrinth;  tall 
Lissochilus  orchids  grew  in  bold  clumps  where  the  banks  became 
more  solid.  Fantastic  pandanus  trees  gradually  gave  way  to 
water-side  palms,  and  as  the  stream  narrowed,  to  an  incredible 
variety  of  huge  trees.  Far  away  to  the  northeast  were  lofty 
mountains — the  Manenguba  and  other  ranges,  which — I  guessed 
rightly — rose  to  altitudes  not  far  below  ten  thousand  feet.  I 
recorded  their  existence  for  the  first  time.  At  last  I  got  beyond 
the  sphere  of  Bantu  languages  to  the  verge  of  the  Semi-Bantu  or 
non-Bantu.  The  natives  on  the  banks  knew  little  of  the  European 
and  showed  hostility  to  my  Duala  guides.  They  seemed  to  me 
absolutely  nude,  but  as  having  rather  well-developed  figures 
which  gave  one  the  impression  of  red  nakedness.  Their  skins 
were  brown  rather  than  black  in  color  and  they  were  strenuously 
smeared  with  rosy  dye  obtained  from  the  camwood  tree — Baphia 
nitida. 

I  returned  to  Old  Calabar  in  the  autumn  of  1886  and  did  a 
great  deal  of  work  with  Mr.  Hewett  whose  health  was  beginning 


King  Jaja  of  Upobo. 


THE  STORY  OF  MY  LIFE 


173 


to  fail.  We  got  on  together  so  exceedingly  well,  so  completely 
fitted  into  one  another  in  our  work,  that  I  had  ceased  to  wish  he 
might  go  on  leave  and  let  me  show  what  I  could  do  on  my  own 
basis.  He  made  no  secret  however  of  being  at  the  end  of  his 
career,  wanting  but  little  time  to  arrive  at  a  pensionable  age.  His 
wish  was  that  I  should  succeed  him,  so  he  trained  me  from  that 
point  of  view. 

He  decided  that  before  he  went  on  leave  I  should  put  in  three 
months  surveying  the  eastern  part  of  the  Calabar  region  and  the 
western  versant  of  the  Cameroons.  Here  indeed  the  maps  needed 
much  correction.  In  many  respects  they  were  fantastically  drawn 
and  did  not  correspond  with  actual  geography.  For  instance 
where  and  what  was  the  "Rio  del  Rey,"  supposed  to  be  the  fron- 
tier between  England  and  Germany  when  the  British  Cameroons 
was  handed  back  to  Germany?  ^  So  in  February,  1887,  I  started 
in  an  immense  "house  canoe"  of  old  Yellow  Duke's  to  explore 
and  roughly  survey  the  "Rio  del  Rey." 

Yellow  Duke  was  a  really  worthy  old  man,  the  house-slave  of 
one  of  the  "Kings"  of  Old  Calabar.  I  think  in  course  of  time  he 
had  become  in  his  search  for  respectability  a  Presbyterian.  At 
any  rate  he  used  occasionally  to  attend  the  Presbyterian  Church 
in  Old  Calabar.  He  was  a  tremendous  trader  in  palm  oil  and 
palm  nuts.  Both  alike  came  from  the  wonderful  Oil  palm  which 
was  the  main  wealth  of  Old  Calabar.  The  palm  oil  was  of  two 
quite  distinct  kinds — a  rich-looking,  pleasant-smelling,  red  or 
orange  liquid  which  exuded  from  the  outer  husk  of  the  palm  nut ; 
and  a  clear  white,  transparent  oil  proceeding  from  the  actual 
kernel  of  the  nut.   Both  were  equally  valuable. 

Yellow  Duke  during  a  long  life  had  built  up  for  his  "master" 
— some  kinglet  of  Old  Calabar — a  considerable  commerce  in 
these  two  oils.  He  sent  his  traders  far  away  into  regions  between 
the  basins  of  the  Cross  River  and  the  Cameroons,  trafficking  with 
unknown  natives  for  these  two  oils;  and  transferred  them  from 
his  collecting  depots  in  fleets  of  hundreds  of  canoes  to  Old  Cala- 

1  Consul  Hewett  had  to  perform  this  task  in  the  early  spring  of  1887, 
before  leaving  for  England. 


174 


THE  STORY  OF  MY  LIFE 


bar,  through  the  bewildering  maze  of  creeks  which  I  was  to 
survey  and  map.  The  fixing  of  the  future  German  frontier  was 
to  depend  on  this  mapping,  and  we  were  anxious  that  it  should 
not  traverse  the  curiously  distinct  boundary  line  between  the 
Bantu  and  the  non-Bantu  natives.  Yellow  Duke,  whatever  may 
have  been  his  origin,  was  classed  as  an  Efik  of  Old  Calabar.  He 
always  struck  me  as  thoroughly  respectable  and  compared  to  most 
of  the  other  Efik  chiefs  he  was  scrupulously  clothed. 

In  those  days — the  'eighties — the  Efik  people  of  Old  Calabar 
like  the  Duala  of  the  Cameroons,  were  on  the  verge  of  complete 
nudity,  the  nudity,  I  think  I  may  say,  of  innocence.  It  was  only 
in  the  case  of  married  women  that  custom  entailed  a  little  tuft  of 
cloth  or  bark.  The  Baptist  Mission  in  the  Cameroons  had  seldom 
or  never  pointed  out  to  the  Duala  or  Isubu  that  they  were  naked. 
Young,  unmarried  women  used  to  come  to  church  quite  modestly 
without  a  stitch  of  clothing  and  take  part  in  the  service.  In  Old 
Calabar  between  1882  and  1888  Efik  men  of  importance  were 
given  to  calling  on  the  Consul  or  the  merchants  clad  in  little  more 
than  a  yachting  cap  or  a  helmet  or  some  other  head-gear.  They 
might  wear  a  fold  of  cloth  slung  loosely  about  the  thighs  which 
when  they  were  seated  they  allowed  to  fall  to  the  ground.  But 
Yellow  Duke  was  swathed  about  his  lower  limbs  in  cloths  which 
hung  down  to  his  ankles,  and  clad  above  his  waist-belt  in  coat  and 
waist-coat. 

I  had  many  adventures  during  the  three  months  of  surveying 
the  affluents  of  the  lower  Cross  River  and  the  streams  which 
flowed  from  the  western  versant  of  the  Cameroons  range.  Yel- 
low Duke's  huge  canoe — constructed  from  the  trunk  of  a  giant 
tree — had  a  little  house  in  the  middle  which  served  me  as  sleeping 
quarters  at  night  or  a  refuge  from  the  rain  in  the  daytime.  In 
front  of  the  house  was  a  pleasant,  shady  space  where  I  sat  on  a 
chair  with  a  table  secured  in  front  of  me.  On  this  table  my  sur- 
veying, reading,  writing  could  be  done  or  my  meals  laid.  Forty 
paddlers,  twenty  on  either  side,  before  and  behind  the  little  house, 
paddled  or  poled  the  canoe,  which  also  held,  besides  myself,  an 
interpreter  or  two,  an  Accra  cook,  a  personal  servant,  and  some- 


THE  STORY  OF  MY  LIFE 


175 


times  a  guide.  There  were  also  two  milch  goats,  two  or  three 
hairy  sheep  for  eventual  eating,  a  number  of  tame  Muscovy  ducks 
and  fowls,  whose  lives  were  generally  reprieved  by  their  laying 
eggs,  a  tame  monkey  or  two  and  a  varying  cohort  of  pet  birds. 
The  little  house  held  in  addition  to  my  bed — though  I  often  slept 
on  shore  in  a  native  house — my  lioxes  of  clothes,  books,  presents 
for  natives  and  trade  goods.  Elsewhere,  under  canvas  covers, 
were  the  men's  rations  and  blankets. 

It  was  surprising  what  this  immense  canoe  could  carry — pas- 
sengers more  than  fifty  in  number  sometimes.  Of  course  she 
would  have  been  unsafe  in  anything  like  a  "sea,"  in  waves  that 
were  much  larger  than  ripples ;  but  I  only  remember  once  an  acci- 
dent which  came  near  to  a  complete  disaster.  We  had  been  up  a 
new  river  that  apparently  entered  the  sea  directly  by  its  own 
mouth,  and  we  had  reached  the  limit  of  its  navigability  in  the 
interior.  Such  natives  as  we  could  catch  sight  of  lurking  in  the 
thick  bush  seemed  very  wild  and  hostile ;  the  current  became  so 
strong  that  the  men  could  not  paddle  against  it.  I  decided  to  turn 
round  and  descend  the  stream.  We  did  so,  but  the  vehement 
force  of  the  water  bore  the  vessel  under  an  immense  bough  which 
stretched  across  half  the  channel.  The  canoe  sank,  I  clambered 
on  to  the  limb  of  the  tree  and  was  pulled  on  shore  by  the  boys; 
otherwise  my  floating  home  went  to  the  bottom — seemingly — 
the  ducks  rose  to  the  surface  and  swam  away.  ...  I  stood  on 
the  sand — possibly  the  shore  of  a  forested  island — a  ruined  man; 
my  surveys,  note-books,  trade  goods,  treaties,  botanical  collec- 
tions— everything — lost!  But  my  agony  of  reflection  only  en- 
dured a  few  minutes.  A  hundred  yards  farther  on  I  saw  the 
prow  and  house  roof  of  the  canoe  reappear  in  the  shallow  water, 
and  gradually  the  whole  vessel  emerged  from  the  flood  and  was 
stranded  on  the  beach.  We  hurried  down  to  examine  it.  We 
had  lost  our  ducks;  some  of  the  hens  were  drowned;  a  monkey 
had  died  from  the  shock :  that  was  about  the  extent  of  the  incur- 
able damage ;  except  that  the  covers  of  some  of  my  most  valued 
books  are  colorless  and  sagging  to-day  after  their  immersion  in 
the  Ndiang  River  in  March,  1887. 


176 


THE  STORY  OF  MY  LIFE 


Whilst  I  was  surveying  the  intricate  network  of  streams 
between  Calabar  and  the  Cameroons,  Consul  Hewett  was  (very 
reluctantly)  handing  over  to  the  Germans  the  erstwhile  British 
possession  of  Cameroons  Mountain  and  the  Victoria  township. 
When  we  both  regained  Old  Calabar  he  was  so  ill  he  had  to  be 
carried  on  board  a  steamer  and  leave  for  England.  He  installed 
me  as  Acting  Consul  for  the  Bights  of  Biafra  and  Benin — the 
Oil  Rivers,  as  we  were  beginning  to  call  the  vast  Niger  Delta, 
between  Lagos  and  the  Cameroons.  I  had  now  the  opportunity 
of  solving  its  knottiest  problems  which  Hewett  had  envisaged 
but  had  lacked  the  physical  health  to  disentangle  and  clear  up. 
The  most  important  of  these  difficulties  was  the  position  and 
rights  of  the  chief  settled  near  the  mouth  of  the  Opobo  River — 
the  famous  Jaja. 

Jaja  had  begun  life  as  the  slave  of  the  King  or  one  of  the  chiefs 
of  Bonny.  I  could  never  ascertain  decidedly  what  part  of  the 
Niger  Delta  had  given  him  birth,  but  I  think  he  was  an  Ibo,  from 
Bende,  and  was  sold  as  a  slave  when  he  was  twelve  years  old. 
During  the  'fifties  and  'sixties  he  had  become  noteworthy  by  his 
ability.  In  the  'seventies  he  seems  to  have  definitely  settled  down 
on  the  banks  of  the  Opobo,  a  river  which  though  it  has  several 
estuarine  creek  connections  with  the  main  Niger  was  derived 
from  independent  sources  in  the  Ibo  country.  From  being  a 
trusted  slave  trading  for  his  master  Jaja  rose  to  the  position  of  an 
independent  chieftain.  The  British  war  vessels  visited  his  town 
occasionally;  their  commanders  found  him  intelligent  and  hos- 
pitable, he  gave  them  amusing  entertainments  and  elaborate 
feasts.  Among  other  extraordinary  persons  attracted  to  his 
"court"  was  an  American  Negress  from  Liberia:  Emma  Jaja 
Johnson,  as  she  styled  herself.  I  don't  think  she  was  ever  a  wife 
of  Jaja :  she  was  elderly  and  very  plain.  But  she  had  become  his 
secretary,  after  being  governess  to  his  children.  Yet  she  looked 
into  his  theory  of  dispute  with  the  Consuls  and  told  him  he  had 
no  "case." 

The  point  was  this :  Jaja,  early  in  his  history  as  an  independent 
chieftain — for  he  had  been  recognized  as  such  by  Consul  Living- 


THE  STORY  OF  MY  LIFE 


177 


stone  ^  who  made  a  treaty  with  him  in  1873 — wished  to  constitute 
.palm  oil  and  palm  kernels  throughout  all  his  domain  his  own 
monopoly.  He  would  farm  the  palm  forests  of  the  interior,  be 
the  sole  seller  of  their  oil  products,  and  compensate  the  natives 
who  brought  in  the  oil  or  the  kernels.  He  in  fact  would  do  all 
the  trade;  and  as  he  had  fixed  a  price  at  which  the  European 
merchants  could  buy  these  things  from  him,  he  resented  the  fluc- 
tuations in  value  of  palm  oil  in  the  European  market  and  the 
consequent  occasional  change  of  purchase  price  on  the  part  of  the 
merchants.  After  several  years  of  disputes,  he  selected  one  firm 
with  an  agency  at  Opobo — Messrs.  A.  Miller  Brothers  of  Glas- 
gow— and  sent  all  the  oil  to  them. 

No  doubt  the  large  and  constant  quantity  he  placed  at  their 
disposal  compensated  them  for  the  slightly  increased  cost  in  the 
purchase ;  or  they  may  have  hoped  that  if  the  other  firms  had  to 
abandon  Opobo  and  they  secured  the  monopoly  they  might  bring 
Jaja  to  reason  regarding  the  selling  price.  At  any  rate  they  had 
had  in  force  a  monopoly  of  oil  purchase  for  some  two  years  in  the 
Opobo  district,  which  materially  increased  the  prosperity  of  their 
firm. 

Amongst  the  questions  to  be  solved  was  the  area  of  Jaja's  ter- 
ritory. If  it  were  only  ten  square  miles  from  the  coast  inland  and 
could  be  fixed  at  that,  it  might  have  been  better  worth  while  to 
consider  this  ten  square  miles  as  being  Jaja's  personal  property, 
his  "farm,"  the  produce  of  which  he  could  dispose  of  as  he 
pleased.  But  the  Opobo  River  and  its  mouth  with  a  "good"  bar 
was  the  port  for  all  the  eastern  portion  of  the  Niger  Delta,  east 
of  Bonny  and  west  of  the  Cross  River  (Old  Calabar). 

Jaja  had  been  spending  a  proportion  of  his  great  wealth  on 
the  purchase  of  many  rifles — it  was  said  he  had  four  thousand — 
and  several  small  field  pieces,  and  was  from  month  to  month 
making  himself  the  great  Chief  of  the  eastern  half  of  the  Niger 
Delta.  He  was  seeking  to  become  the  overlord  of  the  vigorous 
Ibo  people  behind  his  swamps,  and  had  begun  to  send  armed  men 

*  Charles  Livingstone  the  brother  of  David  who  was  given  this  consulate 
after  the  Zambezi  Expedition. 


178  THE  STORY  OF  MY  LIFE 


to  form  garrisons  on  all  the  river  mouths  between  Opobo  and  the 
Cross  River.  In  fact  when  I  arrived  at  the  Niger  Delta  in  1885 
and  took  stock  of  the  situation  I  decided  there  were  two  powerful 
native  states  with  whom  one  had  to  deal  carefully:  The  kingdom 
of  Benin  on  the  west — with  its  important  coast  vice-royalty  under 
the  chief  Nana;  and  Opobo,  under  Jaja,  to  the  east  of  the  main 
river.  I  had  no  quarrel  with  Nana  or  Benin,  perhaps  because 
before  I  visited  them  I  had  settled  the  Opobo  question;  but  Jaja 
represented  the  whole  crisis  of  our  Protectorate  over  southern 
Nigeria:  our  attempt  to  establish  freedom  of  trade. 

As  soon  as  Consul  Hewett  had  gone  and  I  had  attended  to 
matters  of  pressing  business  at  Old  Calabar  I  went  to  Opobo  in 
July,  1887.  On  the  east  bank  of  the  estuary  were  five  Liverpool 
firms,  members  of  The  African  Association  of  Liverpool ;  on 
the  west  bank  was  one,  Messrs.  A.  Miller  Brothers  of  Glasgow. 
Jaja's  chief  town  was  on  the  west  bank,  several  miles  from  its 
mouth.  The  five  firms  had  been  obstructed  in  commerce  for  a 
year  or  more  because  they  wanted  to  trade  direct  with  the  native 
producers  of  the  oil  and  not  through  Jaja,  at  Jaja's  prices.  The 
five  firms  in  question  belonged  as  I  have  said  to  The  African 
Association  of  Liverpool.  Miller  Brothers  in  those  days  stood 
apart,  independent  of  any  League  or  Association,  though  they 
were  credited  with  possessing  an  understanding  with  the  Royal 
Niger  Company.  The  firms  of  The  African  Association  had  a 
year  or  two  previously  brought  out  to  Opobo  steam  launches  or 
little  river  steamers.  They  proposed  sending  these  to  the  inland 
markets,  near  the  plantations  of  oil  palms,  and  therewith  pur- 
chasing and  transporting  to  the  port  at  the  mouth  of  the  Opobo 
the  palm  oil  and  palm  kernels  of  the  interior  beyond  the  mangrove 
swamps. 

Jaja  answered  this  movement  by  barring  the  way  to  navigation 
with  booms  slung  across  the  river  where  it  narrowed  and  digging 
narrow  canals  for  the  passage  of  his  trading  canoes;  and  when  I 
had  purposely  struck  into  the  worst  of  these  booms  and  ordered 
its  removal  as  an  illegal  bar  to  the  navigation  of  the  Niger  rivers 
he  further  obstructed  trade  by  threatening  the  Ibo  and  Kwo 


THE  STORY  OF  MY  LIFE 


179 


peoples  with  punishment  if  they  should  bring  their  oil  for  sale 
anywhere  else  than  to  his  market  places  or  (possibly)  to  Messrs. 
Miller  Brothers'  house. 

Jaja  looked  upon  Consul  Hewett's  departure  as  a  moral  vic- 
tory :  he  considered  he  had  driven  him  home  and  that  it  would  be 
easy  further  to  establish  his  position  by  giving  a  handsome  enter- 
tainment to  the  British  war  vessels  which  might  occasionally 
visit  the  river  mouth  and  hear  of  the  restiveness  of  the  five  firms 
excluded  from  the  local  trade.  My  arrival  came  as  a  disagree- 
able surprise,  enhanced  by  my  youthful  appearance.  At  first  he 
declined  even  to  discuss  the  matter,  telling  me  my  "father,"  Con- 
sul Hewett,  had  gone  home  and  that  he  could  only  resume  the 
discussion  when  he  returned.  I  showed  him  however  one  or  two 
despatches  from  the  Foreign  Office  asking  for  a  full  report  on 
the  Opobo  difficulty  and  pointed  out  that  they  were  addressed  to 
me  personally  as  Acting  Consul.  Moreover  I  had  come  to  the 
Opobo  River  in  a  gunboat,  the  Goshazvk,  under  Lieut. -Comman- 
der Pelly  who  stayed  with  me  till  the  end  of  the  controversy. 

J.  H.  Pelly  was  what  I  used  to  call  "an  unmitigated  trump." 
As  his  name  is  no  longer  in  Who's  Who,  I  fear  he  must  be  dead ; 
for  he  won  distinction  later  on  in  the  Persian  Gulf  which  caused 
his  name  to  be  recorded  in  that  compendium.  He  was  short  of 
stature,  tight-lipped,  twinkling-eyed,  and  very — quietly — deter- 
mined. He  was  either  a  teetotaller  or  nearly  so,  and  always 
spruce  in  his  dress  and  tidy  in  his  ship.  He  was  no  fool  and 
required  to  be  satisfied  about  the  justice  of  any  case  in  which  he 
was  asked  to  interfere.  The  Goshawk  was  a  little,  old-fashioned, 
slow-steaming  gunboat,  but  he  effected  wonders  with  her.  His 
officers  and  men  seemed  always  in  the  pink  of  health  and  the 
best  condition.    He  was  the  British  Navy  at  its  very  best. 

Captain  Hand  of  the  Royalist  was  the  senior  naval  officer  in 
command  on  the  West  African  station  and  he  met  me  in  Opobo 
and  lent  me  considerable  assistance,  making  a  journey  with  me 
under  much  discomfort  and  some  danger  to  the  verge  of  the  Ibo 
country  to  satisfy  himself  that  Jaja  was  really  causing  the  alleged 


180 


THE  STORY  OF  MY  LIFE 


obstruction  and  monopoly  in  the  palm  oil  trade.  But  without 
definite  instructions  from  the  Admiralty  he  would  not  undertake 
any  coercive  and  punitory  action,  though  he  fully  endorsed  the 
views  I  expressed.  Other  coast  business  carried  him  away  for 
a  few  weeks;  and  his  departure  having  encouraged  Jaja  in  the 
belief  that  there  were  divided  counsels  and  a  difference  of  opin- 
ion, the  latter  proceeded  to  more  violent  measures  to  enforce  his 
monopoly  of  trade  and  obstruction  to  water  passage  through  his 
territory.  At  last  wishing  to  nip  his  scheme  in  two  before  he 
could  assemble  all  his  widely  scattered  forces  and  retire  with 
them  to  the  Ibo  country,  I  applied  to  the  Foreign  Ofifice  for  per- 
mission to  bring  matters  to  an  issue  and  either  persuade  Jaja  to 
go  with  me  to  the  Gold  Coast  Colony  and  there  have  his  case 
tried,  or  declare  him  to  be  at  war  with  the  British  Government 
and  then  take  action  against  him. 

I  waited  at  Bonny  for  the  answer.  In  those  days  the  ocean 
cable  had  only  got  as  far  toward  the  Oil  Rivers  as  the  mouth  of 
the  Bonny  River,  forty  miles  from  Opobo.  The  creeks  through 
which  one  had  to  pass  between  the  two  places  were  much  too 
narrow  or  shallow  for  the  passage  of  a  gunboat  or  any  ship;  the 
journey  could  only  be  made  by  native  canoes.  I  appreciated  fully 
all  the  risks  of  being  caught  by  Jaja's  people  and  quietly  "put 
away."  But  fortunately  I  had  sometime  previously  made  friends 
with  the  very  civilized  King  of  Bonny,  who  spoke  and  wrote  Eng- 
lish like  an  Englishman  and  dressed  as  we  do.  The  kingdom  of 
Bonny  had  once  ruled  over  Opobo,  and  Jaja  had  been  one  of  the 
king's  slaves.  Some  unfortunate  intervention  of  Consul  Liv- 
ingstone had  recognized  Jaja's  independence  and  prevented 
Bonny  administration  of  the  affairs  of  Opobo.  I  managed  how- 
ever to  enter  into  communication  with  the  young  king,  whose 
great-grandfather  had  been  converted  to  Christianity,^  and  he 
sent  a  State  canoe  of  his  own  to  fetch  me  and  to  take  me  back. 

I  despatched  my  telegram  and  a  few  hours  afterwards — "very 

^  His  conversion  made  a  great  sensation  in  Evangelical  London  in  the 
'forties,  and  Bonny  in  the  main  was  the  original  of  Dickens'  "Borriaboola 
Gha." 


THE  STORY  OF  MY  LIFE 


181 


quick  response !"  I  thought — received  what  I  naturally  took  to  be 
the  answer :  "Your  action  with  regard  to  Jaja  approved.  Fur- 
ther instructions  will  be  sent  after  communication  with  Admir- 
alty." 

Accordingly  I  returned  to  Opobo  under  the  protection  of  King 
George  Pepple  and  prepared  for  action.  I  summoned  Jaja  to  a 
meeting  at  Messrs.  Harrison's  house  (my  headquarters)  or,  if  he 
preferred  it,  on  the  beach  outside,  where  I  would  read  to  him  my 
decision  and  invite  his  acceptance.  I  gave  him  my  word  that  if 
he  refused  my  conditions  he  should  be  allowed  to  return  to  his 
town  before  any  act  of  hostility  took  place. 

He  came,  with  many  canoes  and  an  armed  escort  of  seven  hun- 
dred warriors,  each  with  a  Snider  rifle. 

I  reviewed  the  circumstances  of  this  long  struggle  between 
him  and  the  Consular  authority  and  stated  there  was  only  one 
way  of  arriving  at  a  solution,  outside  a  resort  to  arms :  that  he 
should  proceed  to  Accra  on  a  mail-steamer  with  a  few  attendants, 
that  I  should  accompany  him;  and  there  the  case  between  us 
should  be  tried  by  a  person  to  be  appointed  by  the  British  Gov- 
ernment. To  every  one's  surprise  he  assented  and  went  quietly 
on  board  H.M.S.  Goshawk.  I  followed.  The  Goshawk  took  us 
to  Bonny  where  we  transferred  ourselves  to  a  mail  steamer 
which  in  two  or  three  days  landed  us  at  Accra.  Oddly  enough, 
during  our  passage  to  Accra  I  noted  "J^j^-  bas  never  shown  such 
friendliness  toward  me  before.  All  through  the  daytime  he  is 
my  constant  companion.  He  will  sit  by  my  side  while  I  am 
writing  and  amuse  himself  by  looking  over  my  sketch  book  and 
asking  questions  as  to  its  contents.  He  occupies  the  Ladies'  cabin 
on  board  the  steamer,  with  his  wife.  Patience,  and  his  house- 
keeper and  amanuensis,  Emma  Jaja  Johnson.  He  is  further 
accompanied  by  a  cook,  a  steward,  three  servants  and  one  Accra 
carpenter." 

To  Jaja  the  sight  of  Accra  (the  first  civilized  town  he  had 
seen)  was  a  source  of  wonderment  and  for  a  time  distracted  his 
thoughts  from  his  own  troubles ;  so  much  so  that  he  intimated  to 
the  Administrator  of  the  Gold  Coast  (Col.  Frederick  White)  that 


182 


THE  STORY  OF  MY  LIFE 


if  he  were  sentenced  to  be  exiled  from  Opobo  to  Accra  he  would 
be  quite  content,  being  an  old  man.  Either  he  had  never  looked 
much  at  the  pictures  of  cities  given  in  the  English  illustrated 
papers,  or  had  judged  Europe  to  exist  on  a  wholly  different  plan 
to  Africa. 

Admiral  Sir  Walter  Hunt-Grubbe,  Naval  Commander-in-Chief 
on  the  Cape  of  Good  Hope  and  West  African  station,  had  been 
appointed  to  try  Jaja  for  his  breaches  of  treaty  and  to  investigate 
his  case  generally,  but  he  could  not  arrive  immediately  at  Accra; 
so  having  much  other  business  to  attend,  I  went  back  to  Opobo 
and  Old  Calabar.  I  returned  to  the  Gold  Coast  at  the  close  of 
November,  1887.  Sir  Walter  Hunt-Grubbe  gave  Jaja  a  very  fair 
trial,  spent,  indeed,  several  days  beforehand  mastering  all  the 
written  and  printed  evidence.  At  the  conclusion  of  his  investiga- 
tion he  found  the  old  man  guilty  on  three  counts  of  the  breaches 
of  treaty  with  which  he  was  charged;  on  the  fourth  count  the 
accusation  was  not  fully  proved.  Jaja  was  therefore  deposed, 
and  no  succeeding  chief  of  Opobo  was  to  be  elected;  Jaja  was 
further  sentenced  to  a  banishment  of  five  years  from  his  country, 
and  a  choice  of  residence  offered  him — either  in  the  British  West 
Indies,  St.  Helena,  Ascension,  or  Cape  Colony.  He  chose  St. 
Vincent  in  the  Windward  Islands. 

Those  of  my  readers  who  have  long  memories  may  remember 
that  Lord  Salisbury  pardoned  him  after  four  years'  residence  at 
St.  Vincent,  that  he  was  returning  thence  to  Opobo,  but  fell  ill 
on  the  voyage  and  died  at  one  of  the  Canary  Islands.  His  wealth, 
which  must  have  been  considerable,  was  secured  to  him,  and  dur- 
ing his  exile  the  district  of  Opobo  made  him  an  allowance  at  the 
rate  of  f  1000  a  year.  So  that  I  do  not  think  he  could  be  regarded 
as  harshly  treated.  And  the  quick  result  of  my  intervention  was 
an  enormous  increase  in  Opobo  trade,  on  the  part  of  the  natives 
as  well  as  of  the  Europeans. 

The  settlement  of  this  test  case — a  case  watched  from  all 
points  of  the  Protectorate  coast — ended  the  tyranny  of  the  "mid- 
dle-man" which  had  been  the  great  obstacle  to  a  wide  development 
of  trade  in  the  vast  Niger  Delta  for  a  hundred  years. 


TIIK  STORY  OF  MY  LIFE 


183 


The  Niger  River  had  really  been  discovered  from  Senegambia 
on  the  west  and  from  Lake  Chad  on  the  east;  but  its  delta  and 
outlet  into  the  sea  remained  undetermined  till  the  plucky  journey 
of  the  Lander  brothers  in  1830-31  (carried  through  despite  the 
utmost  difficulties  imposed  by  the  Ibo,  Ijo  and  allied  Delta  peo- 
ples). Its  main  stream  had  been  ascended  from  the  sea  north- 
v^'ards  by  naval  or  semi-naval  expeditions  which  the  middle-men 
could  not  well  arrest;  but  these  had  done  little  to  penetrate  the 
deltaic  lands  on  east  or  west,  and  trade  from  the  main  Niger  in 
those  directions  was  greatly  cut  off  or  hampered — especially 
above  Lokoja — by  the  Fula  power  or  political  influence ;  so  much 
so,  that  in  the  'seventies  it  had  almost  come  to  an  end.  Our 
Consulate  or  Vice  Consulate  of  Lokoja  had  been  closed,  and  save 
for  missionary  persistency  very  little  was  being  done  by  British 
traders  to  penetrate  Nigeria  until  the  end  of  the  'seventies  and 
early  'eighties,  when  Captain  George  Goldie  Taubman  had 
brought  about  the  fusion  of — what  was  it,  thirteen? — small  com- 
panies into  one,  and  had  bought  up  and  absorbed  two  rival  French 
companies,  favored  by  Gambetta.  These  were  to  have  made  the 
Lower  Niger  French  and  closed  it  against  British  trade.  Sir 
George  Goldie — as  he  afterwards  became — had  drawn  attention 
to  and  started  to  rivalize  the  efforts  of  the  German  explorer,  E. 
R.  Flegel,  to  map  and  penetrate  the  eastern  Niger  and  Benue 
countries.  Flegel  naturally  hoped  to  secure  them  for  Germany ; 
Goldie  resolved  they  should  be  British. 

Consul  E.  H.  Hewett  had  done  much  by  treaty-making  between 
1883-1885  to  secure  the  Niger  Delta  and  the  Lower  Niger  for 
British  influence;  George  Goldie  Taubman's  Niger  Company 
(once — 1879-1886 — known  as  the  United  African  Co.)  had  ne- 
gotiated treaties  of  its  own  along  the  Lower  Niger  and  western 
Benue  which  formed  the  basis  of  its  charter  granted  in  1886. 
But  a  good  deal  of  the  Cross  River  district  on  the  southeast 
remained  untouched,  uncovered  by  treaties;  the  Benin  kingdom 
on  the  west  had  not  been  visited ;  and  Jaja  of  Opobo  still  barred 
the  way  to  trade  developments  in  the  Ibo  country  between  the 
main  Niger  and  the  course  of  the  Cross  River. 


184 


THE  STORY  OF  MY  LIFE 


Consul  Hewett  had  also  won  over  to  a  British  Protectorate 
all  the  Cameroons  coast  north  of  the  Spanish  territory  of  the 
Muni  River,  save  for  about  twenty  square  miles  in  the  southern 
portion  of  the  Wuri  (Cameroons  River)  estuary.  This,  as 
related,  had  been  sold  by  "King"  Bell  to  Dr.  Naclitigal,  the  Ger- 
man envoy,  and  had  been  made  the  basis  of  the  bullying  German 
demand  for  a  vast  colonial  dominion. 

We  had  given  way  under  Earl  Granville ;  and  as  evidence  of  a 
desire  that  Germany  likewise  should  have  a  Colonial  empire,  we 
had  allowed  them  to  assume  from  this  paltry  bargain  that  they 
had  a  right  to  192,000  square  miles  of  West-Central  Africa;  and 
early  in  1887  had  added  thereto  the  Cameroons  Mountain  where 
the  Baptist  Mission  had  acquired  considerable  landed  rights 
which  they  had  used  for  the  founding  of  townships.  After  the 
spring  of  1887  however  our  territorial  claims  were  cut  off  from 
the  Cameroons  and  the  eastern  half  of  the  Cross  River  Basin.  I 
had  however  resolved  to  secure  what  remained  along  the  navi- 
gable stretch  of  the  Cross  River — as  will  be  described  later — and 
to  extend  my  Consular  journeys  if  possible  to  Benin,  as  well  as 
visiting  each  mouth  or  outlet  of  the  Niger  Delta  which  I  could 
induce  a  gunboat's  commander  to  penetrate.  Not  a  few  of  the 
Niger  "mouths"  at  that  time  were  imperfectly  sounded  and 
mapped,  and  naval  commanders  in  giving  in  to  my  enthusiasm 
for  geographical  discovery  might  be  prejudicing  their  own 
careers;  so  it  was  not  surprising  that  my  propositions  were  not 
always  convincedly  received. 

Between  December,  1887,  and  May,  1888,  however,  I  entered 
or  tried  to  enter  every  one.  The  mouth  of  the  Kwo-ibo  I  had 
visited  from  the  land  side;  Bonny  (Obani)  I  had  been  to  many 
times,  and  at  the  close  of  1887  I  steamed  up  the  broad  Bonny 
estuary  to  the  firm  land  and  open  prairies  of  Okrika,  rich  in  cat- 
tle. New  Calabar  was  less  familiar :  I  refer  to  its  three  important 
trading  centers  of  Abonema,  Degama  and  Bagama.  But  its 
chiefs  and  people  belonged  to  the  I  jo  group,  the  dominant  or 
exclusive  race  of  the  coast  fringe  of  the  Niger  Delta  from  the 
Apata  Creek  (west  of  Benin  River)  to  Opobo  on  the  east.  At 


THE  STORY  OF  MY  LIFE 


185 


New  Calibar^  (as  the  Abonema-Degama-Bagama  trading  centers 
were  generically  called)  trade  was  so  prosperous  that  I  do  not 
recall  any  troublesome  palavers  having  arisen  between  natives  and 
white  men.  At  Brass  on  the  other  hand  there  was  much  trouble 
and  a  menace  of  outbreak  which  occurred  some  months  after  my 
return  to  England.^ 

The  trouble  on  the  occasion  of  my  visit  was  chiefly  connected 
with  new  trade  developments  of  the  Royal  Niger  Company.  Its 
direction  at  Asaba  had  apparently  begun  to  prohibit  or  obstruct 
independent  trading  on  the  banks  of  the  main  Niger  below  Abo, 
before  the  stream  became  deltaic.  Or  it  had  in  some  way  inter- 
fered with  the  trade  in  palm-oil  on  the  part  of  the  Brass  middle- 
men. To  the  latter  this  conception  of  a  great  ruling  combination 
of  merchants  (the  Royal  Niger  Company)  was  a  new  thing. 

1 1  have  never  seen  any  good  explanation  offered  of  the  place  or  racial 
term  "Calabar."  I  imagine  it  is  derived  from  the  Portuguese  "Calabarra" — 
"the  bar  is  silent,"  namely  fairly  safe  for  vessels  to  cross.  At  the  mouths 
of  many  of  the  rivers  the  bar  or  sandy  ridge  becomes  dangerously  shallow 
at  low  tide  and  the  breakers  roar  and  foam  over  it.  Old  Calabar  certainly 
had  a  deep  and  silent  bar,  and  possibly  the  entrance  of  the  New  Calabar 
River  was  the  same.  Otherwise  there  was  no  special  connection  or  relation- 
ship between  the  peoples.  Those  of  Old  Calabar  were  Semi-Bantu,  and  the 
people  of  New  Calabar  were  Ijos — allied  in  speech  to  the  inhabitants  of 
Opobo,  Bonny,  and  the  Estuarine  Niger. 

2  The  cause  of  the  Brass  trouble  was  the  policy  of  the  Royal  Niger 
Company  in  trying  to  establish  an  exclusive  commerce  for  itself  and  its 
dependent  native  tribes  on  the  main  course  of  the  Niger  River  from  Akasa 
northward.  The  natives  of  Brass  of  course  had  been  accustomed  for 
generations  to  seek  for  their  palm-oil  inland  in  close  proximity  to  the  Orashi 
and  other  confluent  branches  of  the  main  Niger.  When  the  Niger  Company 
sought  directly  or  indirectly  to  oppose  their  doing  so,  the  Brass  tribe 
avenged  themselves  first  on  the  nearly-related  Akasa  people.  The  Brass 
warriors  organized  from  their  inland  town  of  Nimbe  an  expedition  against 
Akasa  which  took  black  and  white  people  by  surprise.  I  do  not  think  they 
made  any  direct  attack  on  the  Royal  Niger  Company's  houses,  but  they  wiped 
out  the  native  villages  around  them  and  brought  back  many  prisoners  and 
dead  bodies.  Then  ensued  at  Nimbe  and  elsewhere  cannibal  feasts  on  a 
great  scale,  in  which  many  native  Christians  joined.  I  was  summoned  to 
the  Foreign  Office  to  give  an  opinion  as  to  what  should  be  done  in  the 
way  of  punishment.  The  Secretary  of  the  Church  Missionary  Society — 
Robert  Needham  Cust— likewise  attended.  A  telegraphic  enquiry  was  drawn 
up  and  sent  to  Archdeacon  Crowther  (son  of  the  famous  Negro  Bishop), 
who  resided  at  or  near  Nimbe  and  was  in  charge  of  the  Brass  Mission.  He 
was  asked  what  punishment  should  be  inflicted  on  the  guilty  persons.  He 
replied  "Suspension  from  all  Church  privileges." 


186 


THE  STORY  OF  MY  LIFE 


They  were  always  a  truculent  lot,  the  Brass  people,  and  on  the 
occasion  of  my  visit  they  uttered  a  good  many  wild  threats 
against  "Akasa" — as,  from  its  seat  at  the  mouth  of  the  main 
Niger,  they  styled  the  company.  I  went  to  see  a  collection  of 
chiefs  at  the  Brass  capital  of  Nimbe,  promised  to  present  their 
grievance  to  the  British  Government,  but  cautioned  them  against 
taking  any  action  themselves.  Nimbe  I  found  to  be  like  all  these 
Ijo  towns :  a  squalid  place,  approachable  from  a  complicated 
branch  of  the  Niger  (some  thought  it  the  main  stream  of  that 
river)  by  a  narrow  and  tortuous  canal. 

The  people,  toward  me,  were  boisterously,  noisily  good- 
natured,  but  I  could  see  how  dictatorial  toward  the  European 
they  had  been  and  could  be.  Down  to  a  few  years  previous  to 
my  first  visit  to  Brass,  the  natives  like  those  of  Bonny  had  their 
totemistic  animal  to  whom  they  tendered  a  slavish  worship.  In 
the  Brass  district  the  sacred,  tribal  animal  in  whose  species  the 
soul  of  the  tribe  was  supposed  to  dwell  was  the  African  python, 
perhaps  the  hugest  of  existing  snakes,  a  distant  relation  of  the 
South  American  boa  constrictor,  which  it  has  probably  exceeded 
in  size  in  tropical  Africa  or  Malaysia.  In  Bonny  down  to  the 
end  of  the  'seventies  the  worshiped  fetish  was  the  monitor  lizard, 
locally  miscalled  the  "iguana."  ^ 

Until  1878  this  reptile  worship  was  so  real  that  the  British 
Consular  authorities  in  the  "Oil  Rivers"  lent  it  their  sanction. 
Europeans  under  the  Consular  jurisdiction  were  forbidden  to  kill 
the  sacred  lizard  of  Bonny  or  the  still  more  sacred  snake  of 
Brass,  and  were  heavily  fined  by  the  British  Consul  if  they 
infringed  this  prohibition.  On  one  occasion  in  Brass  in  1878  an 
agent  of  Messrs.  Hatton  and  Cookson's  firm  found  a  large  python 
in  his  house  and  killed  it.  When  the  misdeed  became  known  to 
the  Brass  chieftains,  they  made  a  descent  on  the  factory  with 
their  armed  followers,  dragged  the  agent  out  of  the  house  on  to 
the  beach,  tied  him  up  by  his  thumbs,  spat  in  his  mouth  and 
inflicted  other  indignities  on  him.  Then  they  broke  open  the  store 
and  took  out  about  £20  worth  of  goods  which  they  confiscated. 

iThis  name  was  imported  from  the  West  Indies  into  West  Africa. 


THE  STORY  OF  MY  LIFE 


187 


Consul  Hopkins  hearing  of  the  disturbance  arrived  in  Brass,  con- 
sidered the  case,  and  fined  the  unfortunate  agent  another  £20  in 
addition ! 

At  Bonny  the  monitor  hzards  (five  to  eight  feet  long)  became 
a  sickening  nuisance  at  the  same  period.  They  devoured  the 
European  traders'  fowls,  turkeys,  ducks  and  geese  with  impunity ; 
they  might  lie  across  the  road  or  the  doorways  of  houses  with 
their  six  or  seven  feet  of  length  and  savagely  lash  the  shins  of 
people  who  attempted  to  pass  them,  with  their  whip-like,  ser- 
rated tails.  If  any  one  wounded  or  killed  a  monitor  there  was  no 
end  of  a  to-do:  the  ofTender  if  a  European  was  assaulted  or 
robbed  by  the  natives,  the  British  Consul  harangued  him  on  a 
man-of-war  and  fined  him  into  the  bargain.  In  other  parts  of 
the  Delta  it  might  be  the  shark  or  the  crocodile,  the  pelican  or 
goliath  heron  that  was  worshiped ;  but  nowhere  was  this  zoolatry 
carried  to  greater  lengths  than  at  Bonny  or  Brass.  For  its 
effectual  abolishment,  which  was  of  the  greatest  benefit  to  the 
well-being  of  natives  and  Europeans,  we  owe  our  thanks  not  to 
the  intervention  of  Government  officials,  naval  or  consular,  nor 
to  the  bluff  remonstrances  of  traders,  but  to  the  unceasing  labors 
of  the  agents  of  the  Church  Missionary  Society,  who  by  winning 
the  natives  from  these  absurd  practises  had  brought  about  such  a 
change  of  affairs  that  by  the  time  I  was  revisiting  the  Niger  Delta 
as  a  Consul  the  python  would  have  been  promptly  killed  at  Brass 
if  it  made  its  appearance,  and  the  monitor  lizard  at  Bonny  was 
relegated  to  the  woods  and  swamps. 

As  regards  this  last  mentioned  animal  there  was  even  a  revolu- 
tion of  feeling.  In  the  opening  months  of  1882  Bonny  town 
was  still  infested  with  numbers  of  these  great  sluggish  lizards. 
The  missionaries  however — at  Easter  time — screwed  the  courage 
of  their  Bonny  converts  to  the  sticking  point.  A  grand  slaughter 
of  lizards  was  arranged  to  take  place  on  Easter  Sunday.  As  soon 
as  the  morning  bells  of  the  Mission  church  rang  out  a  large  num- 
ber of  Bonny  men  and  boys  armed  themselves  with  matchets  and 
sticks  and  commenced  the  slaughter  of  the  lizards.  By  the  end 
of  the  day  there  was  not  one  left  alive  in  the  town.   So  great  were 


188 


THE  STORY  OF  MY  LIFE 


the  numbers  slaughtered  that  the  stench  became  for  the  rest  of 
the  week  almost  insupportable.  But  this  holocaust  killed  the  old 
superstition  and  marked  a  real  revolution  in  the  people's  minds. 

A  change  similarly  abrupt  a  year  or  two  earlier  had  put  an  end 
to  the  python  worship  at  Brass.  Before  that  time  if  a  python 
seized  a  child  in  the  streets  in  its  coils  and  commenced  to  slaver  it 
with  its  viscous  saliva,  the  mother,  so  far  from  interfering  to  save 
it  must  stand  by  and  call  out  her  thanks  and  summon  her  friends 
and  relations  to  rejoice  with  her  that  the  python-god  had  so  hon- 
ored her  family  as  to  devour  her  child. 

From  Brass  I  went  on  through  a  maze  of  creeks  to  Akasa 
near  the  actual  outlet  of  the  main  Niger  or  Nun  River.  Though 
very  unhealthy  Akasa  was  still  an  important  place,  the  secondary 
headquarters  of  the  Royal  Niger  Company.  There  was  not  a 
good  bar  at  the  river  outlet  and  the  place  had  a  curiously  depress- 
ing aspect  and  effect  on  most  European  minds.  I  suspect  nowa- 
days it  is  almost  deserted ;  but  at  the  time  of  my  visit  the  For- 
cados-Warri  entrance  to  the  Niger  Delta,  far  away  on  the  west, 
had  not  been  thoroughly  surveyed  and  adopted  by  steamers  feed- 
ing the  Royal  Niger  Company's  stores.  It  was  soon  to  come  into 
favor  as  the  best  means  of  entering  the  Niger ;  in  fact  one  or  other 
of  the  gunboats  that  came  to  pick  me  up  was  to  proceed  after- 
wards to  survey  the  Forcados  entrance  and  the  facilities  it  was 
thought  to  offer  for  safe  access  to  the  Benin  River  on  the  north- 
west and  the  main  Niger  on  the  east.  From  Akasa  however  I 
made  a  steamer  journey  up  the  Niger  to  Abo  to  visit  the  first 
town  of  importance  on  the  undivided  river  above  the  delta,  and 
to  see  something  of  the  Ibo  territory  from  the  west. 

The  Ibo  country  lying  between  the  Lower  Niger  and  the  vicin- 
ity of  the  Cross  River  to  the  east  was  nearly  a  hundred  and  forty 
miles  from  north  to  south  and  seventy  to  ninety  miles  from  west 
to  east.  The  Ibos  speak  a  well-marked  language  distantly  related 
to  other  groups  of  tongues  such  as  Igara  and  Nupe  and  not  with- 
out faint  Semi-Bantu  affinities.  Their  speech  had  been  studied 
and  made  known  by  missionaries  since  the  middle  of  the  'forties. 


Yellow  Duke  of  Old  Calabar. 


THE  STORY  OF  MY  LIFE 


189 


The  people  as  late  as  the  close  of  the  'eighties  were  still  reputed 
cannibals,  but  their  cannibalism  was  not  of  a  ferocious  type,  as  it 
often  became  among  the  Ijos;  it  seemed  to  be  confined  to  eating 
superfluous  slaves  or  great  criminals  or  war  captives.  Their 
country  was  densely  populated  in  those  days  and  their  towns  had 
a  distinct  character  with  rectangular,  well-built  houses  of  clay 
and  thatch,  interspersed  with  groups  of  magnificent  trees  and 
flowering  shrubs,  seemingly  purposely  cultivated  or  tended  by 
the  citizens.  The  towns  never  struck  an  observer  as  crowded. 
Each  house  or  little  group  of  houses  stood  by  itself  in  an  inde- 
pendent compound.  The  open  spaces  between  these  compounds 
— the  streets — were  kept  scrupulously  clean,  being  frequently 
swept  with  brooms  made  out  of  palm-fronds  which  were  indus- 
triously used  by  the  boys  and  youths  who  had  to  keep  the  town 
in  order.  These  places  consequently  were  most  pleasant  of  aspect 
to  the  weary,  sun-smitten  traveler,  w^ith  their  neat-looking  houses 
(often  tastefully  arranged  inside),  their  magnificent  shady  trees, 
the  branches  of  which  might  be  hung  with  parasitic  orchids  and 
become  the  home  of  a  myriad  chattering,  gaudy-plumaged  weaver 
birds.  Not  infrequently  the  umbrageous  trees  would  be  supplied 
with  a  wooden  settle  at  their  base  where  one  could  sit  in  the  cool 
shade.  The  sanitary  arrangements  of  the  towns  were  very 
superior  to  what  prevailed  in  the  coast  districts  among  the  Ijos 
and  the  Efik  people.  Certain  localities  were  set  apart  as  latrines 
for  men  and  for  women,  and  unto  these  all  the  inhabitants  must 
resort.  Consequently  the  towns  and  villages  were  free  from  the 
nauseous  bad  smells  so  prevalent  in  those  along  the  littoral. 

The  Ibos,  moreover,  w^ere  an  exceedingly  industrious  people : 
clever  smiths,  making  many  iron  implements;  weavers  of  grass 
cloth,  gifted  with  marked  jesthetic  taste  in  designing  their  textile 
fabrics  and  in  decorating  the  interior  of  their  houses,  in  all  of 
which  and  in  their  social  arrangements  they  were  superior  to  the 
degraded  coast  tribes,  who  had  lost  whatever  ancient  culture  they 
may  have  had — if  they  had  any — and  had  not  yet  become  thor- 
oughly imbued  with  European  civilization.  I  looked  upon  the 
Ibos  as  the  "most  hopeful"  tribe  of  the  Lower  Niger.    It  had 


190 


THE  STORY  OF  MY  LIFE 


been  they,  since  the  beginning  of  the  nineteenth  century,  who  had 
created  the  trade  with  the  white  man  at  the  river  mouths  of  the 
Deha — the  Ijos,  the  Kwos,  and  the  Jekris  of  the  Benin  coast  were 
twenty  to  thirty  years  ago  only  "middle-men,"  non-producers, 
dwelling  for  the  most  part  in  squalid  villages  on  the  borders  of 
mangrove  swamps. 

The  Ibos  were  industrious  agriculturists,  possessing  fine  herds 
of  cattle,  goats,  and  sheep,  and  quantities  of  fowls  and  Muscovy 
ducks. ^  They  were  far  from  being  united  under  one  paramount 
chief,  but  the  town  of  Bende  (which  I  made  several  unsuccessful 
efforts  to  reach,  especially  from  the  Cross  River)  was  regarded 
as  a  semi-sacred  city  where  dwelt  a  junta  of  fetish-men,  "doc- 
tors," magicians.  This  was  not  entered  and  the  "bad"  magic 
broken  up  till  about  twenty  years  ago.  There  was  the  still  more 
sacred  center  of  Aro,  near  the  Cross  River,  but  I  think  this  lay 
outside  the  Ibo  range  in  a  country  peopled  by  the  Ibibio  (Kwo) 
tribe. 

"Ibibio"  was  the  name  attributed  to  the  Kw5  people  who  dwelt 
in  the  deltaic  country  west  of  the  Cross  River.  Apparently  they 
were  not  near  akin  to  the  Akwa  Semi-Bantu  who  inhabited  the 
Lower  Cross  River  and  the  Rio  del  Rey  under  the  names  of  Ekoi 
or  Ejam.  The  Kwo  people  were  related  to  the  Efik  of  Old  Cala- 
bar and  to  the  almost  uncountable  tribes  of  the  western  Cross 
River. 

There  was  another  people  inhabiting  the  lower  Opobo  before 
the  invasion  of  Jaja  and  his  indiscriminate  following  of  Ijo 
people.  These  were  the  Andoni,  whose  language  from  the  little 
I  have  seen  recorded  of  it  I  was  never  able  to  classify:  it  seemed 
neither  Semi-Bantu  nor  related  to  Ijo  or  Ibo.  They  have  prob- 
ably by  this  time  been  absorbed  as  a  separate  type  by  the  more 
vigorous  surrounding  peoples. 

The  Kwos  were  great  road-makers.  Instead  of  the  customary 
narrow  native  path  (a  foot-wide  track  meandering  through  ob- 

^  The  miscalled  "Muscovy"  Duck  (Catrina)  of  course  was  never  in 
Muscovy  except  in  a  zoological  garden  or  a  museum.  It  is  a  native  of 
Tropical  America,  introduced  into  Africa  and  Tropical  Asia  by  the  Portu- 
guese. 


THE  STORY  OF  MY  LIFE 


191 


trusive  vegetation)  the  K\v6s  of  Ibibio  took  pride — thirty,  forty 
years  ago — in  making  broad  smooth  roads  from  village  to  vil- 
lage. These  they  kept  clean  of  weeds  and  bordered  with  fine 
shady  trees  and  neat  hedges  which  enclosed  plantations.  Their 
villages  however  were  not  so  orderly  and  neat  as  the  Ibo  towns, 
and  the  inhabitants  were  disgustingly  dirty  in  their  manner  of 
living.  I  was  told,  unlike  their  neighbors  to  the  north  and  east, 
they  made  a  point  of  never  washing. 

But  they  were  not  addicted  to  cannibalism,  and  in  disposition 
were  good-tempered,  placable,  and  industrious.  In  my  day  they 
displayed  a  curious  predilection  for  acrobatic  performances. 
They  would  walk  on  their  hands,  turn  double  somersaults  and 
take  high  jumps. 

The  Efik  people  of  Old  Calabar  and  its  neighborhood  are  said 
to  have  been  of  common  origin  with  the  Kwos  and  to  have  orig- 
inated in  the  Ibibio  country  at  the  head  of  the  Cross  River  Delta. 
About  a  hundred  and  eighty  years  ago  they  seem  to  have  reached 
the  lower  part  of  the  Kwa  and  Calabar  Rivers  and  to  have  dis- 
placed the  preceding  Akwa  people.  They  entered  into  commerce 
with  the  Portuguese  who  came  to  the  Cross  River  and  the  Rio 
del  Rey  in  search  of  slaves.  During  the  Napoleonic  wars  the 
Portuguese  were  displaced  by  the  British,  and  the  Efik  "aristoc- 
racy" grew  up  under  English  and  Scottish  traders  in  palm  oil 
and  very  persevering  Presbyterian  missionaries.  Their  Semi- 
Bantu  language  was  studied  and  described  from  the  middle  of 
the  nineteenth  century. 

Their  chiefs  or  "Kings"  professed  to  be  of  long-recorded 
descent.  The  two  principal  monarchs  among  them  were  in  my 
day  King  Eyo  Honesty  vii.  of  Creek  Town  and  King  Duke 
Ephraim  ix.  of  Duke  Town.  "Honesty"  was  an  inherited  second 
name,  attributable  a  hundred  years  ago,  no  doubt,  to  the  posses- 
sion of  that  rare  quality  in  a  trader.  Both  "Duke"  and  "Ephra- 
im" I  fancy  were  traders'  corruptions  of  native  names.  The 
King  of  my  day  I  found  to  be  a  Christian,  the  husband  of  one 
wife,  and  a  thoroughly  Europeanized  man,  who  spoke,  read,  and 
wrote  excellent  English,  always  dressed  in  European  clothes, 


192 


THE  STORY  OF  MY  LIFE 


lived  in  a  European  house  and  was  a  thoroughly  estimable  char- 
acter. His  colleague  of  Duke  Town,  Old  Calabar,  though  very 
amenable  to  Consular  advice  and  a  good  sort  of  man  as  an  African 
chief,  had  still  much  more  of  the  untutored  savage  about  him 
than  King  Eyo.  When  I  first  worked  in  the  Consulate  as  Vice 
Consul,  Mr.  Hewett  had  to  reprove  King  Duke  for  coming  there 
on  business  with  simply  a  tall  hat  on;  otherwise  in  a  state  of 
nudity.  After  his  attention  had  been  called  to  the  want  of  respect 
evidenced  in  this  carelessness  as  to  clothing,  the  costumes  he  next 
assumed  at  official  meetings  were  disturbing  to  one's  gravity  of 
countenance.  The  last  time  I  saw  him,  when  he  came  to  bid  me 
good  bye  in  May,  1888,  he  wore  pink  tights,  a  cabman's  many 
caped  coat,  a  red  chimney-pot  hat,  and  blue  spectacles.  The 
missionaries  accused  him  of  being  a  cruel  man  naturally,  but  as  I 
never  had  a  case  of  cruelty  brought  to  my  notice  I  can  not  say. 
Though  he  was  not — in  my  time — a  professing  Christian,  he  was 
well  disposed  towards  the  Presbyterian  missionaries,  and  sub- 
scribed annually  to  the  two  Missions  established  at  Old  Calabar. 

Other  chiefs  of  importance  in  my  day  were  John  Boko  Cob- 
ham  v.,  and  Asibon  Edem  iii.  "Cobham"  I  fancy  was  a  mispro- 
nounced and  misspelled  native  name,  and  Asibofa  was  rendered 
"Archibong"  by  the  traders.  Asibofi  was  rather  a  headstrong 
character  in  my  time,  because  his  father  had  been  king  of  Old 
Calabar.  The  chieftainship  however  was  elective  and  at  his 
father's  death  King  Duke  had  been  elected  as  the  principal  chief. 
Both  John  Boko  Cobham  and  Asibon  vacillated  in  clothing; 
sometimes  donning  royal  robes  trimmed  with  real  or  imitation 
ermine,  and  not  infrequently  appearing  at  my  house  in  nothing 
more  pretentious  than  a  yachting  cap.  John  Boko  Cobham 
however  struck  me  as  being  a  shrewd,  well-instructed  man,  a  nat- 
ural lawyer,  versed  not  only  in  the  intricate  native  code,  but  also 
acquainted  by  means  of  his  own  studies  with  the  main  principles 
of  our  English  jurisprudence.  All  these  chiefs  spoke  English — 
more  or  less. 

The  interiors  of  the  Calabar  houses  M^ere  not  devoid  of  taste, 
and  the  plans  of  their  dwellings  gave  a  faint  suggestion  of  the 


THE  STORY  OF  MY  LIFE 


193 


North  or  of  Arab  influence,  as  though  they  had  brought  clown  in 
this  direction  some  influence  of  the  northern  Niger  peoples. 
Their  houses  were  generally  built  in  the  form  of  a  square,  the 
narrow  apartments  inclosing  a  central  patio  or  yard,  open  to  the 
sky,  in  the  middle  of  which  a  tree  was  planted,  occasionally  hung 
w'ith  charms  and  fetishes.  They  were  very  fond  of  brass-work. 
They  obtained  sheets  of  brass  from  European  traders  and  having 
cut  out  circular  plates  they  would  stamp  on  these  fantastic  designs 
by  means  of  a  large-headed,  sharp-pointed  nail  and  a  stone  used 
as  a  hammer.  The  work  was  usually  done  by  women,  quite 
untaught.  The  designs  were  in  many  cases  really  graceful  and 
chiefly  consisted  of  flowers  and  fruit  in  conventional  forms. 
Some  traders  said  they  introduced  "mermaids."  They  may  have 
learned  this  myth  from  the  Portuguese  w^ho  revived  old  Mediter- 
ranean stories  at  the  sight  of  the  manati  suckling  its  young  at  the 
breast.  The  manati  at  the  time  of  my  stay  in  the  Oil  Rivers  was 
not  uncommonly  met  with  in  the  mangrove-bordered  estuaries. 

The  Cross  River  is  a  lengthy  stream  quite  independent  of  the 
Niger  system.  It  had  been  ascended  by  Consul  John  Beecroft  and 
a  party  of  missionaries  in  a  small  steamer  at  the  end  of  the 
'forties  or  beginning  of  the  'fifties.  This  exploring  party  got  as 
far  as  the  point  marked  "Rapids"  on  old  maps  where  the  supposed 
main  stream  of  the  river  left  the  fringe  of  lofty  mountains,  the 
w^estern  boundary  of  the  Cameroons. 

I  had  w^ished  to  make  the  ascent  partly  because  it  was  advisable 
to  conclude  treaties  to  confirm  British  influence,  and  partly 
because  I  heard  it  was  a  very  populous  region  and  guessed  that 
the  natives  would  be  of  considerable  interest  in  regard  to  their 
languages.  No  steam  launch  was  available,  and  the  stream  was 
not  likely  to  be  deep  enough  for  the  passage  of  any  small  gun- 
boat. So  I  was  constrained  once  again  to  borrow  Yellow  Duke's 
long  canoe  with  its  little  house  in  the  middle,  like  an  elongated 
Noah's  Ark.  With  this  I  ascended  the  (idiotically  misnamed) 
"Cross"  River  as  far  approximately  as  Ekosoro,  beyond  the  dis- 
trict named  or  misnamed  "Atam." 

After  leaving  a  region  seemingly  called  by  a  double  name — 


194 


THE  STORY  OF  MY  LIFE 


Iko-Morut — we  passed  through  an  uninhabited  area  of  twenty 
miles.  The  peace  and  quiet  seemed  delicious  after  the  constant 
contact  with  noisy  villages.  We  saw  in  one  place  a  chimpanzee 
coming  down  to  the  riverside  to  drink;  in  several  glades  there 
were  herds  of  surprised  elephants.  But  as  we  neared  a  large 
village  that  was  probably  Obubra  we  were  accorded  a  boisterous 
reception.  A  horde  of  excited  people  armed  with  guns  and  spears 
waded  out  into  the  river  and  compelled  the  canoe  to  stop,  in  fact 
dragged  it  summarily  into  shallow  water.  Three  or  four  lusty 
savages  pulled  me  out  of  the  canoe,  mounted  me  on  the  shoulders 
of  the  biggest,  and  carried  me  off  at  a  run  to  the  town  where  I 
was  put  in  a  hut  with  the  door  open.  Here  I  had  to  submit  to  be 
stared  at  for  an  hour  by  hundreds  of  inquisitive  savages,  unaware 
as  to  the  fate  of  my  Kruboys  and  Efik  servants.  Almost  over  my 
head,  hanging  from  the  smoke-blackened  rafters  of  the  house, 
was  a  smoked  human  ham,  black  and  bluish  green.  About  a  hun- 
dred skulls  were  ranged  round  the  upper  part  of  the  clay  walls  in 
a  ghastly  frieze. 

But  the  hour  passed  and  presently  my  Calabar  interpreter  and 
personal  servant,  Joseph  Eyamba,  stood  before  me  and  told  me 
quietly  that  all  was  well — so  far — though  they  had  been  through 
an  anxious  time.  My  captors  reappeared  looking  as  friendly  as 
possible,  and  now  asked  me  through  the  interpreter  to  give  some 
account  of  myself. 

I  said  I  had  come  on  a  mission  of  friendliness  from  a  great 
white  Queen  who  was  the  ruler  of  the  White  People  and  wanted 
to  enter  into  friendly  relations  with — I  had  to  pause  not  knowing 
the  name  of  the  place — "With  'Ededama'  "  suggested  the  inter- 
preter— I  repeated  the  name.  I  should  like  to  "make  a  book  with 
them,"  I  added,  to  take  home  to  the  Woman  Chief  who  had  sent 
me  out.  To  do  this  we  should  have  to  return  to  the  canoe.  Ac- 
cordingly my  big  bearer  who  had  conveyed  me  thither  again  pre- 
sented himself ;  I  scrambled  on  to  his  shoulders  and  he  trotted 
down  with  me  to  the  waterside  and  placed  me  with  unexpected 
gentleness  in  the  canoe  where  with  great  relief  I  noted,  so  far  as 
a  cursory  glance  round  could  satisfy  my  eyes,  that  nothing  had 


THE  STORY  OF  MY  LIFE 


195 


been  removed  or  mishandled.  The  forty  Kruboys  and  Calabar 
paddlers  sat,  semi-prisoners,  on  the  beach,  looking  at  first  very 
miserable. 

I  extracted  a  Treaty  form  from  my  despatch  box,  and  three 
or  four  persons  of  prominence  (or  so  they  seemed)  crowded  into 
the  canoe  to  make  crosses  on  it  with  my  ink ;  but  the  proceedings 
were  altogether  too  boisterous  for  serious  treaty-making.  I  was 
longing  to  get  away,  as  from  various  indications  I  realized  we 
had  come  to  this  farther  inhabited  region  on  a  market  day,  when 
a  great  deal  of  palm  wine  had  been  drunk.  So  after  the  crosses 
had  been  splodged  on  the  treaty- form  and  I  had  made  up  my 
present  of  cloth  and  beads,  my  crew  was  seated  and  ready  to 
resume  paddling  while  good  humor  prevailed. 

The  chief  men  of  the  town  however  insisted  on  giving  me  a 
return  present — a  hundred  yams  and  two  sheep ;  and  at  parting 
an  old  chief  or  medicine-man  bestowed  on  me  a  necklace  of 
human  knuckle  bones  from  off  his  own  neck.  This  I  have  still 
in  my  possession. 

Above  Ededama  the  banks  of  the  river  on  either  side  were 
thickly  inhabited,  but  the  people  became  increasingly  turbulent. 
Although  our  enforced  interviews  ended  in  uproarious  friend- 
ship, yet  to  begin  with  the  shouting  warriors  seemed  undecided 
as  to  whether  they  should  not  kill  and  eat  my  Kruboys. 

Under  these  circumstances  I  thought  it  better  not  to  pursue  my 
explorations  any  farther  but  to  make  a  judicious  retreat  while 
the  natives  still  doubted  how  to  deal  with  us.  Our  descent  of  the 
river  ( it  was  the  short  dry  season  and  the  stream  was  at  its  low- 
est) was  much  more  rapid  than  the  ascent.  In  one  long  day  we 
covered  the  upward  journey  of  three  days ;  in  a  second  spell  of 
twelve  hours  paddling  we  had  returned  to  regions  faintly  in  touch 
with  Old  Calabar  civilization.  This  was  called  the  country  of 
Arun.  Here  we  rested  for  three  days  in  absolute  safety  and 
regafned  the  Calabar  River  in  a  leisurely  fashion.  It  was  an 
interesting  trip  which  revealed  to  me  the  great  variety  of  Semi- 
Bantu  languages  along  the  Cross  River  and  the  very  interesting 
and  diverse  native  types.    Some  of  the  Negroes  seen  at  places 


196 


THE  STORY  OF  MY  LIFE 


like  "Atam,"  near  the  junction  of  the  Cross  River  with  the  Pow- 
erful Ewayofi  affluent  from  the  north,  had  refined,  handsome 
faces,  with  thin  well-shaped  noses  and  expressive  eyes.  I  could 
not  ascertain  to  what  tribe  they  belonged.  They  were  usually 
quite  naked  and  certainly  were  not  Fulas. 

I  next  proceeded  on  a  gunboat  to  try  to  examine  one  of  the 
least-known  parts  of  the  Niger  Delta,  even  yet:  the  district  be- 
tween Akasa  and  the  River  Ramos,  south  of  Forcados.  The 
commander  of  the  gunboat  liked  not  the  aspect  of  the  bars  at 
these  somber  river  openings,  so  I  had  to  give  up  any  idea  of 
exploring  them.  This  region  has  only  been  fully  mapped  and 
opened  up  quite  recently.  Several  officials  sent  to  hold  stations 
here  lost  their  lives  from  native  attacks.  One  of  these  men, 
before  he  was  killed  about  twelve  years  ago,  told  me  in  a  letter 
that  the  naked  bush-folk  were  not  Ijos,  but  belonged  to  an  even 
more  primitive  tribe  speaking  an  unknown  language  unlike  Ijo. 
Since  his  death,  however,  I  have  heard  nothing  more  of  this 
region  between  the  Forcados  and  the  direct  outlet  of  the  Niger  at 
Akasa. 

My  final  objective  in  the  Delta  before  making  preparations  to 
return  home  on  leave  was  a  visit  to  the  Benin  River,  to  search  for 
the  unused  balance  of  presents  brought  out  for  treaty-making  by 
Consul  Hewett,  to  enquire  into  the  complaints  of  British  traders, 
and  if  possible  to  visit  Benin  City  and  see  the  King  of  Benin. 
The  gunboat  which  conveyed  me  thither  from  Old  Calabar  was 
to  enter  the  Forcados  mouth  of  the  Niger  and  explore  the  various 
channels  leading  to  the  Benin  River.  The  direct  entrance  to  this 
estuary  had  a  bad  bar,  and  the  discovery  of  the  indirect  approach 
by  the  Forcados  mouth,  the  Warri  and  Sapele  creeks  (which  in 
an  eastern  direction  communicated  with  the  main  Niger)  quite 
changed  the  commercial  prospects  of  the  Benin  traders  and  accen- 
tuated the  idea  of  getting  into  direct  communication  with  the 
King  of  Benin  who  up  till  then  had  signed  no  treaty  with  us. 

This  remarkable  native  state  in  those  days  and  later  much 


THE  STORY  OF  MY  LIFE 


197 


inspired  my  curiosity.  What  was  there  in  its  geography  and  its 
people  which  should  have  generated  its  striking  development  of 
art  in  metal-working  and  design,  and  have  made  it  the  one  pow- 
erful native  state  in  the  vicinity  of  the  Niger  Delta?  One  read  of 
no  similar  kingdom  in  all  southern  Nigeria,  Lagos,  or  the  Cam- 
eroons.  Benin  had  been  of  alluring  fame  since  the  fifteenth  cen- 
tury, when  it  was  visited  by  the  Portuguese  who  were  faithfully 
portrayed  in  their  costumes  and  their  armature  of  cross-bows 
and  bell-mouthed  guns  by  the  Negro  artists  in  bronze.  When  in 
the  early  part  of  the  nineteenth  century  attempts  were  made  to 
find  the  outlet  of  the  Niger  several  of  these  explorations  were 
commenced  by  way  of  Benin  City.  Yet  access  to  Benin  for  sev- 
eral centuries  had  not  been  easy,  geographically  or  politically.  The 
Bini  people  proper  inhabited  the  region  between  the  Ovia  River 
on  the  northwest  and  the  Jamieson  stream  to  the  southeast;  but 
east  and  south  of  the  Jamieson  River  were  the  Sobo  and  Warri 
tribes  which  spoke  dialects  related  to  the  Bini  language  and  had 
probably  been  subject  to  Bini  rule  a  century  ago.  The  coast 
district  west  of  the  Benin  River  estuary  was  till  about  1893  sub- 
ject to  the  semi-independent  rule  of  a  Jekri  or  I  jo  chief  named 
Nana,  usually  called  the  Viceroy  of  the  King  of  Benin. 

Nana  before  1888  was  deemed  to  be  a  very  truculent  person- 
age by  the  traders.  I  went  to  the  coast  settlements  at  the  mouth 
of  the  Benin  River  to  meet  him  in  the  winter  of  1887-8,  and 
found  him  different  to  the  traders'  descriptions :  he  was  a  fine- 
looking  Negro,  dressed  in  somewhat  Muhammadan  fashion  in 
flowing  garments.  I  investigated  his  complaints  and  found  them 
in  most  cases  justified.  The  trading  houses  came  to  an  agree- 
ment with  him  and  it  was  understood  that  the  interior  markets 
under  Nana's  control  were  open  to  them.  Nana  then  gave  me 
an  invitation  to  come  and  see  him  at  his  town  in  the  interior 
(Ogbobin?).  I  decided  to  trust  myself  to  him,  and  accordingly 
was  taken  up  to  this  place  in  a  magnificently  arrayed  canoe.  I 
was  greatly  astonished  at  its  large  buildings  of  white-washed 
clay,  neatly  thatched,  its  broad  and  well-swept  streets  and  the 
good  order  of  its  population.    I  was  lodged  in  a  really  comfort- 


198 


THE  STORY  OF  MY  LIFE 


able  house  where  he  fed  me  with  well-cooked  meals,  and  in  the 
afternoons  and  evenings  entertained  me  with  interesting  and 
sometimes  spectacular  displays  of  athletic  sports  and  dancing.  It 
was  almost  like  taking  a  part  on  the  stage  in  a  fantastic  ballet. 
Hundred  of  women  dressed  in  silks  and  velvets  and  armed  with 
large  long-handled  fans  of  horse-hide  or  antelope-hide  executed 
elaborate  and  on  the  whole  decorous  dances.  Perfect  order  was 
maintained.  A  full  moon  lit  up  the  strange  scenes  which  were 
also  aglow  with  rosy  light  from  the  immense  bonfires. 

I  have  seldom  enjoyed  more  any  African  experience  than  my 
visit  to  Nana :  the  comfort  of  my  lodging,  the  good,  well-cooked 
food,  the  ordered  quiet ;  his  politeness  and  regard  for  the  value 
of  time.  He  himself  talked  fairly  fluently  "Coast"  English,  so 
that  intelligent  conversation  was  possible  with  him.  In  addition 
he  was  a  considerable  African  linguist  in  the  tongues  of  the  Niger 
Delta.  He  was  greatly  interested  in  my  attempt  to  write  down 
these  languages;  and  far  more  intelligent  in  African  philology 
than  most  of  the  white  men  (save  missionaries)  in  the  Niger 
Delta.  I  wished  I  had  made  his  acquaintance  a  year  earlier  as  he 
would  have  been  a  valuable  adviser  in  Delta  politics.  Conse- 
quently it  was  with  much  surprise  and  disappointment  that  I 
learned  some  five  years  later  of  his  having  got  into  conflict  with 
the  Administration  of  southern  Nigeria,  possibly  in  connection 
with  the  Benin  reluctance  to  open  up  treaty  relations.  The  Pro- 
tectorate Administration  banished  Nana  from  his  "viceroyalty" 
for  a  number  of  years;  but  I  fancy  he  was  at  length  allowed  to 
return,  a  broken  man,  and  he  is  probably  dead  by  now  from  old 
age.  I  hail  him  with  friendliness  across  an  interval  of  thirty-four 
years ! 

From  the  Benin  River  I  again  returned  to  Old  Calabar;  and 
then  set  out  for  England  on  leave  of  absence,  Mr.  Hewett  having 
returned  for  a  few  months  to  wind  up  his  affairs  and  make  ready 
to  retire  on  a  pension  in  1889.  My  voyage  home  in  June,  1888, 
was  the  first  trip  made  in  the  steamers  of  the  Elder  Dempster 
Line  that  could  be  called  by  me  "agreeable."    The  food  was 


THE  STORY  OF  MY  LIFE 


199 


wholesome  and  well-cooked  and  the  cabins  were  clean.  From  the 
Gambia  River  homewards  the  voyage  was  made  exceedingly 
interesting  by  the  presence  on  board  of  the  first  Chimpanzee 
named  "Consul."  He  was  the  property  of  an  amusing  and  inter- 
esting Administrator  of  the  Gambia  who  had  acquired  him  a  year 
previously,  possibly  from  the  verge  of  Portuguese  Guinea.  Ap- 
parently he  re-named  the  animal  "Consul"  in  reference  to  myself ; 
for  a  close  friendship  sprang  up  between  me  and  this  very  intelli- 
gent ape.  In  the  course  of  a  few  days  Consul  and  I  became 
almost  inseparable.  He  slept  in  the  next  cabin  to  mine  and  came 
to  me  every  morning  when  I  was  shaving,  watching  the  process 
but  never  interfering  with  razor  or  brush.  He  was  generally 
allowed — being  very  cleanly — to  sit  at  my  table  during  meals. 
All  went  increasingly  well  till  after  we  had  left  Madeira.  At 
Funchal  there  had  come  on  board  a  lady  with  a  baby.  The  baby's 
cradle  in  the  daytime  was  placed  on  the  upper  deck  in  the  fine 
June  weather.  The  chimpanzee  had  become  exceedingly  jealous 
of  this  baby,  who  had  aroused  both  interest  and  attention  among 
the  passengers  as  it  was  pretty,  good-tempered  and  quiet. 

One  day  I  noticed  that  at  luncheon  Consul  failed  to  present 
himself.  I  went  to  the  upper  deck  to  see  if  he  were  there  and 
arrived  just  in  time  to  intercept  his  attempt  to  throw  the  pretty 
baby  overboard !  He  had  taken  it  out  of  its  cradle  and  was  mak- 
ing for  a  side  of  the  ship  to  hurl  it  over — I  should  think — when  I 
arrived  on  the  scene  and  took  it  from  him.  The  child  smiled  at 
me  most  good-humoredly,  but  Consul's  face  expression  as  he 
turned  away  was  tragic.  He  had  afterwards  to  be  put  into  an 
iron  cage  and  remain  imprisoned  till  we  reached  Plymouth.  At 
Plymouth  railway  station  he  sobbed  and  screamed  when  I  failed 
to  accompany  him.  But  one  way  and  another  he  had  cost  his 
owner  some  hundred  and  fifty  pounds  and  was  not  purchasable 
for  any  sum  I  could  afford. 

So  ended  my  two-and-a-half  years'  connection  with  the  Niger 
coast  and  the  Cameroons :  for  I  never  returned  there.  I  ofifered 
to  do  so,  as  during  my  residence  there  between  the  commence- 


200 


THE  STORY  OF  MY  LIFE 


ment  of  1886  and  the  summer  of  1888  I  had  only  been  ill  once 
with  Black-water  fever  and  I  had  felt  at  the  close  in  touch  and 
sympathy  with  the  whole  region.  I  had  drawn  the  one  thorn — 
Jaja — which  had  poisoned  the  relations  between  the  European 
traders  and  the  native  producers ;  I  had  got  into  amicable  terms 
with  the  Germans  in  the  Cameroons  and  the  Spaniards  in  Fer- 
nando Poo,  and  had  placed  British  trade  in  both  those  regions 
on  a  better  basis;  I  had  avoided  quarrels  with  the  Royal  Niger 
Company,  realizing  that  its  Niger  monopoly  was  to  be  only  a  tem- 
porary infliction ;  I  had  paved  the  way  to  a  good  understanding 
with  Benin  and  had  settled  many  local  quarrels  on  the  Cross 
River  which  imposed  obstacles  to  trade.  I  had  written  down  and 
studied — more  or  less — forty  languages — Bantu,  Semi-Bantu, 
Niger  Delta — in  preparation  for  my  work  on  the  Bantu  and 
Semi-Bantu  languages ;  had  collected,  skinned  or  bottled,  or  oth- 
erwise preserved  and  sent  home  many  specimens  of  small 
mammals,  birds,  lizards,  snakes,  centipedes,  spiders,  scorpions, 
beetles  and  butterflies  of  the  Cameroons  Mountains  and  the  Niger 
Delta,  besides  forwarding  to  Kew  botanical  collections  from  the 
Upper  Cross  River  and  the  forests  of  the  Cameroons.  I  had  pho- 
tographed many  types  of  Niger  coast  and  Cameroons  Negroes, 
and  the  landscapes  they  lived  in,  and  had  done  much  rough  sur- 
veying on  the  Upper  Cross  River,  the  intervening  country  leading 
to  the  Cameroons,  the  hinterland  of  Opobo,  and  the  Benin  River. 

But  I  had  prevented  Messrs.  Miller  Brothers  of  Glasgow  from 
securing  a  monopoly  of  trade  with  Jaja  on  the  Opobo  River.  Old 
Mr.  Alexander  Miller  died  at  a  great  age  the  other  day  (1922) 
leaving — I  think — £2,000,000  as  his  fortune.  So  my  assertion 
of  Free  Trade  in  the  Niger  Delta  can  not  have  injured  seriously 
his  commercial  prospects;  though  it  may  have  prevented  his  be- 
coming four  times  a  millionaire.  Nevertheless  his  firm  loomed 
largely  in  the  eyes  of  politicians  who  counted  votes;  and  his 
influence  dissuaded  the  Foreign  Office  from  giving  me  the  suc- 
cession to  Consul  Hewett,  and  the  task  of  establishing  the  south- 
ern Nigeria  Protectorate  undertaken  by  Sir  Claud  Macdonald  in 
1891. 


CHAPTER  IX 


Arrived  in  London  toward  the  end  of  June,  1888,  I  estab- 
lished myself  at  Queen  Anne's  Mansions,  in  a  small  but  comfort- 
able flat  on  the  sixth  floor.  My  previous  residence  at  St. 
Margaret's  Mansions  in  Victoria  Street  had  a  sad  ending.  The 
artist-tenant  to  whom  it  was  sub-let  came  to  grief  financially, 
paid  me  no  rent,  and  eventually  decamped  without  leaving  any 
address.  The  lease  had  just  expired  and  the  rooms  had  been 
relet.  Troubles  such  as  these  often  assailed  in  those  days  persons 
holding  far-away  appointments,  whose  interests  were  not  safe- 
guarded vigilantly  in  London.  I  had  however  little  time  to  worry 
over  this  dilemma.  I  was  lucky  to  secure  so  promptly  this  estab- 
lishment at  Queen  Anne's  Mansions,  whence  henceforth  I  made 
my  home  in  London  till  1901.  This  comfort  I  owed  to  the  pres- 
ence there  of  Oswald  Crawfurd  and  his  first  wife,  the  sister  of 
Sir  Clare  Ford  .  .  .  later  on  Ambassador  at  Rome. 

I  had  not  been  more  than  a  few  days  in  London  when  it  was 
intimated  that  Lord  Salisbury  wished  to  see  me.  This  was  con- 
sidered startling,  especially  as  I  was  only  a  Vice-Consul.  Villiers 
Lister  who  gave  me  the  intimation  was  delighted;  Sir  Percy 
Anderson,  the  head  of  the  African  Department,  smiled  benignly; 
but  Sir  Clement  Hill,  the  Chief  Clerk  in  the  African  Department, 
surprised  me  by  his  outburst  of  jealous  rage.  "I  have  been  in 
the  Foreign  Office  since  1871,"  he  exclaimed  (he  was  then  a  clerk 
resident  in  the  Foreign  Office  and  this  angry  outburst  took  place 
in  his  rooms  up-stairs  where  he  had  asked  me  to  dine  with  him), 
"and — will  you  believe  me?  Lord  S.  has  never  once  asked  to  see 
me  and  wouldn't  know  me  if  we  met  in  the  street !"  I  could  only 
express  my  regret,  but  could  hardly  forego  my  interview  till 
Hill's  outraged  feelings  had  received  satisfaction. 

The  meeting  took  place.    Its  alarming  nature  soon  ceased  to 

201 


202 


THE  STORY  OF  MY  LIFE 


afifect  me  since  the  interlocutor  was  so  shrewd,  sensible,  ac- 
quainted with  African  questions  and  conditions,  and  retentive  of 
memory.  The  principal  subject  of  the  talk  was  Jaja  and  the 
circumstances  of  his  exile  to  the  West  Indies.  The  Irish  mem- 
bers of  the  House  of  Commons  had  taken  up  his  case,  inspired 
by  Miller  Brothers — so  'twas  said.  They  had  moved  a  reduction 
of  the  Foreign  Office  Vote  by  a  hundred  pounds  to  be  withdrawn 
from  my  salary.  Lord  Salisbury  glanced  at  notes  to  refresh  his 
memory  on  certain  points ;  having  done  this,  he  treated  of  African 
questions  in  a  larger  way.  Much  regarding  the  future  allotment 
and  administration  of  Africa  was  still  unsettled.  "I  understand 
you  have  been  in  North  Africa — Tunis,  was  it  not? — On  the 
Congo,  in  Zanzibar  and  up  Mt.  Kilimanjaro  ?  Have  you  followed 
at  all  what  is  going  on  in  Nyasaland  ?  The  Arabs  ?  Well :  we 
must  have  some  further  talks  on  the  question  at  large." 

I  left  his  room  a  little  awed,  but  secretly  much  elated.  It  was 
a  great  step  in  advance  to  meet  a  Secretary  of  State  who,  as  far 
as  Africa  was  concerned,  knew  what  he  was  talking  about.  But 
my  elation  was  naturally  very  much  increased  by  receiving  a  day 
or  two  afterwards  a  letter  from  Lady  Salisbury,  inviting  me  to 
spend  the  next  week-end  at  Hatfield. 

I  went  down  there  under  circumstances  allowably  described  in 
my  novel.  The  Gay-Domheys.  At  Hatfield  station  I  was  met  by 
a  very  kindly,  middle-aged  lady,  who  with  several  other  persons 
detailed  by  the  hostess  had  come  to  receive  and  welcome  visitors. 
There  were  one  or  two  other  visitors  besides  myself  in  the  car- 
riage. They  called  her  "Poo-ey."  I  could  not  go  to  such  lengths 
of  familiarity,  despite  her  kind  smile  and  attitude  of  having 
known  me  all  my  life.  So  I  was  rather  hampered  in  my  conver- 
sation till  the  next  day  when  with  great  difficulty  I  identified  her 
as  Lady  Salisbury's  younger  sister.  Miss  Alderson.  Lord  Cran- 
borne  received  me  in  the  hall  and  took  me  to  my  room — the 
"Hornbeam"  room  as  it  was  named,  all  the  bedrooms  being  given 
names  of  noteworthy  English  trees.  Then  I,  with  great  courage 
(as  I  felt),  came  down-stairs  and  sought  out  my  hostess  and  the 
tea  table. 


The  forest  country  of  Cholo,  Shire  Highlands. 


THE  STORY  OF  MY  LIFE 


203 


Lady  Salisbury  was  as  gracious  as  Miss  Alderson.  She  was 
dispensing  tea  on  some  outer  terrace  and  there  were  seated  round 
about  representatives  of  noble  houses.  She  made  me  feel  at  home 
and  pointed  to  a  chair  close  to  her  tea  table ;  then  having  poured 
out  my  tea  she  brought  me  into  the  general  conversation  by  a 
remark  and  a  question.  This  was  not  altogether  to  the  liking  of 
a  peer  who  bore  a  strong  facial  resemblance  to  a  character  created 
by  the  principal  designer  of  Ally  Sloper's  fancies:  "The  Dook 
Snook."  He  was  so  like  that  I  wondered  the  resemblance  failed 
to  occur  to  his  mind,  for  he  must  have  seen  Ally  Slopcr  at  railway 
stations.  But  besides  the  resemblance  in  his  make-up  he  talked 
very  much  as  that  character  was  made  to  talk — scraps  of  French, 
glares  through  the  eye-glass,  and  an  antique  conservatism  that 
seemed  to  excite  much  merriment  in  Lady  Salisbury's  mind.  I 
gathered  from  his  remarks  that  he  was — relatively — in  a  rather 
impoverished  condition,  and  chiefly  made  his  home  in  a  London 
flat  of  great  gorgeousness  decorated  with  paintings  by  Jan  van 
Beers. 

After  tea  I  ran  into  Lord  Salisbury — quite  unintentionally,  as 
may  be  believed.  He  was  conversing  with  Sir  Robert  Morier, 
our  ambassador  then  at  St.  Petersburg.  But  apparently  my 
arrival  was  not  inopportune,  for  I  was  arrested  and  introduced 
to  Sir  Robert,  whom  as  a  matter  of  fact  I  had  first  come  to  know 
in  1883  when  he  was  minister  at  Lisbon.  Then  ensued  a  walk  on 
the  terrace  and  general  conversation  on  Africa ;  next,  the  smoking 
room  and  Lord  Cranborne,  his  younger  brother  Lord  Hugh  and 
Lord  Hugh's  tutor,  who  years  afterwards  I  discovered  to  be 
Canon  Hensley  Henson,  now  Bishop  of  Durham.  Lord  Cran- 
borne provoked  me  to  conversation,  which  in  my  description  of 
African  chimpanzees  trenched  dangerously  near  the  subject  of 
evolution.  Mr.  Hensley  Henson  intervened  rather  aggressively 
on  an  anti-evolutionary  basis.  Lord  Hugh  seconded  him ;  but  I 
managed  to  withdraw  without  committing  myself,  helped  by 
Lord  Cranborne,  who  struck  me  at  that  time  as  being  a  most 
amiable  young  man,  anxious  that  every  guest  of  his  father  should 


204 


THE  STORY  OF  MY  LIFE 


enjoy  himself.  I  note  these  remembrances  without  guaranteeing 
their  accuracy.  I  came  to  know  Hensley  Henson  in  after  years 
and  Hked  him  greatly,  so  perhaps  Lord  Hugh's  tutor  from  Ox- 
ford was  some  other  Henson;  or  more  likely,  after  he  became 
Vicar  of  Barking  his  views  on  the  processes  of  Creation  broad- 
ened. 

The  dinner  of  that  Saturday  was  unforgettable.  A  splendid 
banquet  in  a  magnificent  dining  hall;  a  choice  orchestra  discours- 
ing good  music  in  the  music  gallery;  and  most  of  one's  fellow- 
guests  persons  of  interest  in  appearance,  name,  or  achievement. 

The  evening  that  followed  was  altogether  enjoyable.  Lady 
Gwendolen  Cecil  organized  theatricals  out  of  the  large  company 
of  guests.  She,  I  remember,  played  Lord  Randolph  Churchill  in 
a  wonderful  moustache.  I — among  other  impersonations — was 
part  of  a  whale,  and  a  Moorish  slave  dealer  in  charge  of  a  crew 
of  very  large,  unwieldy  female  slaves.  .   .  . 

The  next  day,  Sunday,  we  went — some  of  us — to  service  in 
the  chapel  and  others  for  walks  in  the  hay-fields.  After  a  very 
gay  and  talkative  lunch,  I  found  myself  invited  to  a  walk  through 
the  park  avenues  by  Lord  Salisbury,  to  accompany  Sir  Robert 
Morier.  We  discerned,  as  we  passed,  his  son.  Lord  Edward, 
attempting  to  explain  to  a  number  of  young  men  and  maids  the 
game  of  golf,  and  the  outcries  led  me  to  believe  that  Arthur 
Balfour  had  come  down  to  expose  its  principles  and  practise.  But 
I  may  have  been  mistaken  in  his  being  actually  present.  At  any 
rate  I  soon  became  absorbed  in  the  nearer  conversation,  hearing 
developed  what  appeared  to  be  Lord  Salisbury's  plans  as  to  the 
future  political  allotment  of  Africa,  supplemented  by  the  obser- 
vations of  Sir  Robert  Morier. 

Much  that  seemed  to  one  at  the  time  accidental  was  no  doubt 
purposed  by  Lord  Salisbury.  I  can  not,  for  instance,  conceive 
myself  to  have  been  bold  enough  to  have  gone  uninvited  for  this 
hour's  stroll,  or  to  have  listened  unpermitted  to  this  unrolling  of 
plans.  The  Niger — whence  I  had  come — was  touched  on  lightly ; 
but  the  behavior  of  the  Arabs  in  Nyasaland  occupied  a  good  deal 


THE  STORY  OF  MY  LIFE 


205 


of  Lord  Salisbury's  attention.  The  Zambezi  question  and  tbe 
Portuguese;  British  interests  on  Nyasa  and  Tanganyika,  the 
Egyptian  Sudan  and  even  Somahland  were  surveyed  with  acu- 
men. Sir  Robert  Morier  had  only  seen  portions  of  North  Africa 
but  he  had  made  some  study  of  African  geography  and  European 
ambitions;  while  as  to  Lord  Sahsbury  his  knowledge  of  the 
known  conditions  of  the  continent  seemed  to  me  remarkable  then, 
since  he  had  seen  little  more  than  Cape  Colony,  Natal,  and  the 
tourist's  Egypt. 

"What  a  pity  it  is  no  one  could  put  the  whole  African  question 
lucidly  before  the  public;  in  some  newspaper  article,  I  mean," 
said  Lord  Salisbury  as  we  turned  back  from  our  walk  once  more 
towards  the  ground  where  they  were  essaying  golf.  I  had  a  sort 
of  feeling  his  eye  rested  on  me  for  a  moment  before  it  looked 
ahead.  At  any  rate  this  feeling  implanted  in  me  the  sudden 
desire  to  present  the  reading  public  with  a  sketch  of  what  I 
assumed  to  be  our  legitimate  ambitions.  I  thought  to  myself  that 
night,  after  I  had  retired  to  my  bedroom,  of  the  points  in  the 
conversation  along  the  avenues;  I  jotted  them  down  and  took 
them  away  in  my  suit-case.  Some  weeks  later  I  had  finally  writ- 
ten out  my  article  and  I  am  under  the  impression  I  submitted  a 
copy  of  it  to  Lord  Salisbury  or  in  some  way  obtained  his  approval 
of  its  publication.  At  any  rate  it  was  published  on  August  22 
(1888)  by  the  Times  {Great  Britain's  Policy  in  Africa.  By  an 
African  Explorer).  I  was  at  the  Foreign  Office  that  morning  in 
the  African  Department.  Sir  Clement  Hill,  the  head-clerk,  sent 
for  me.  He  was  reading  the  Times  when  I  entered.  "Did  you 
write  this?"  he  asked.  "Yes.  And  I  think  I  may  say  Lord 
Salisbury  knew  of  my  doing  so  and  did  not  disapprove." 

"Well :  all  I  can  say  is,  it  is  a  very  extraordinary  proceeding 
and  I  must  make  further  enquiries." 

Presumably  he  did  and  nothing  eventuated. 

Somewhere  about  this  time  I  first  met  a  curious  couple,  if 
indeed  the  word  "curious"  is  permissible,  since  they  were  law- 


206 


THE  STORY  OF  MY  LIFE 


abiding  citizens.  They  were  Mark  Andre  Raffalovich  and  his 
governess — Miss  Gribbell.  Miss  Gribbell's  brother  was  a  Heu- 
tenant-commander  in  the  Royal  Navy,  or  possibly  later  on  a  cap- 
tain. He  commanded  one  of  the  gunboats  in  service  on  the  east 
coast  of  Africa,  and  was  a  very  pleasant  fellow.  I  voyaged  with 
him  somewhere  between  Zanzibar  and  Aden,  or  met  him  at  any 
rate  on  that  coast,  and  he  told  me  how  his  sister  had  taken  charge 
of  the  young  Raffaloviches  ^  and  assisted  to  educate  them,  and  of 
the  problems  they  presented  in  embarking  on  an  independent  life, 
as  they  had  great  wealth,  extraordinary  talent,  but  some  leaven 
of  eccentricity. 

As  if  it  had  been  pre-ordained,  among  the  first  personages  I 
met  at  London  dinner  parties  on  my  return,  were  Miss  Gribbell 
and  her  former  pupil,  Mark  Andre  Rafifalovich.  I  took  Miss 
Gribbell  in  to  dinner,  and  the  first  fact  that  she  drove  home,  was 
that  my  pronunciation  of  her  brother's  and  her  own  surname  was 
incorrect :  it  was  not  "Gribble"  but  "Gribbell."  I  said  I  would 
remember,  and  then  we  discussed  modern  literature,  and  she  told 
me  how  her  ward  had  published  a  book  of  poems,  of  which  indeed 
a  few  days  later  she  sent  me  an  example — Tuberose  and  Meadozv- 
sweet.  This  had  been  published  about  three  years  before,  in 
1885.  I  was  introduced  to  Mr.  Raffalovich.  shortly  afterwards, 
and  went  to  dine  with  him  and  Miss  Gribbell  in  some  very  beau- 
tiful rooms  which  they  tenanted  in  Kensington,  near  the  Albert 
Hall. 

Rafifalovich  was  certainly  blessed  or  cursed  with  a  strange 
appearance.  He  was  short,  angular,  thin,  red-lipped  and  large 
nosed.  I  understood  that  he  was,  at  any  rate,  partly  of  South 
Russian  stock,  but  his  mother  may  have  been  French. 

I  afterwards  met  at  his  rooms,  his  brother,  who  was  more 
normal  and  ordinary  in  appearance,  and  his  sister,  who  soon 
afterwards  married  William  O'Brien,  the  Irish  "patriot,"  just 
before  or  just  after  he  was  sent  to  gaol  for  some  political  offence. 

1  Their  father  was  said  to  be  a  native  of  Odessa  or  southern  Russia  and 
their  mother  a  Frenchwoman. 


THE  STORY  OF  MY  LIFE 


207 


I  never  heard  that  the  marriage  turned  out  other  than  happily; 
in  fact,  I  never  heard  of  her  again,  except  as  an  occasional  writer 
in  the  Times. 

Mark-Andre  later  on  moved  to  a  house  in  South  Audley  Street, 
the  furniture  and  decoration  of  which  were  one  of  the  land-marks 
of  the  elevated  taste  which  was  uprising  in  London.  Miss  Grib- 
bell  who  there  took  charge  of  his  household  was  a  good-looking, 
clever  woman  of  middle  age  and  considerable  ability.  I  remem- 
ber sitting  next  to  her  one  night  at  dinner,  and  admiring  (without 
saying  so)  her  beautiful  and  tasteful  dress,  and  admiring  still 
more  her  inflexible  visage  when  a  stupid  old  gentleman,  on  the 
other  side  of  her,  let  his  roll  fall  into  his  turtle  soup  with  such  a 
splash,  that  the  greater  part  of  it  shot  over  the  front  of  her  dress. 

Eventually  they  left  London  for  Edinburgh,  which  better 
suited  Raffalovich's  health;  and  here  they  were  joined  by  a  man 
who  used  to  be  a  clerk  in  the  Foreign  Office  Library,  but  who 
turned  Roman  Catholic  and  entered  the  priesthood.  I  believe  he 
converted  them  both  to  Roman  Catholicism,  and  henceforth  took 
charge  of  their  souls. 

I  was  sorry  when  they  moved  away  from  London,  because, 
firstly  they  showed  one  how  beautiful  a  London  house  might  be 
made,  and  how  perfect  a  meal  might  be  served  there;  and  sec- 
ondly, one  met  all  the  most  interesting  people  of  London  in  their 
rooms,  even  if  some  of  them  were  fantastic,  self-conscious,  too 
far  in  advance  of  the  times,  or  too  absurdly  retrograde. 

I  was  not  aware  whether  Raffalovich  published  any  further 
book  of  poems.  His  Tuberose  and  Meadowsweet  was  an  amaz- 
ing production  for  a  very  young  man,  born  apparently  in  the 
Crimea,  and  only  learning  English  in  his  school-days.  With  one 
or  two  rare  exceptions  the  phraseology  was  apt  and  expressive, 
and  the  rhyming  clever;  yet  there  seemed  to  be  not  one  grain  of 
sense  throughout  the  whole  collection  of  verses.  It  gave  one  quite 
a  shock  to  see  the  poems  described  as  localized  in  Edinburg — 
Bath — London,  and  so  forth,  and  to  realize  that  they  dealt  with 
little  else  but  roses  and  rapture. 


208 


THE  STORY  OF  MY  LIFE 


"Magic,  magic  on  thy  hair! 
Kisses,  kisses,  from  thy  brow 
Firm  and  soft  and  warm  and  fair, 
Resting  on  thy  lashes  now ! 
Magic,  magic,  in  thy  hair, 
Lover,  lovers,  I  and  thou ! 

"Dear  laburnum  be  thy  hair. 
Oleanders  kisses  be ; 
Mouth  of  mine  lays  rosily 
On  laburnum  lying  there. 
Smooth  laburnum  be  thy  hair. 
Oleanders  kissing  thee, 
Thy  pollen-colored,  sweet,  delicious  hair." 

Among  the  many  ladies  old  and  young  who  swept  through  his 
beautiful  rooms  in  South  Audley  Street  I  looked  in  vain  to  iden- 
tify the  owner  of  the  pollen-colored  hair;  but  this  may  have  been 
a  mark  of  beauty  reserved  to  the  people  of  Nordic  Russia. 

I  remember  about  this  time  meeting  Mrs.  E.  Lynn  Linton. 
She  lived  as  I  did  at  Queen  Anne's  Mansions.  I  rather  think  at 
first  we  had  no  regular  introduction,  but  we  were  two  lonely  peo- 
ple who  took  to  dining  and  lunching  in  the  restaurant,  at  the  same 
table.  She  seemed  to  me  a  kindly  old  lady  of  Victorian  aspect, 
wearing  a  cap  with  flowers  on  her  gray  hair.  Her  eyes,  under 
the  gold-rimmed  spectacles,  seemed  rather  prominent  and  unfo- 
cussed.  Her  conversation  struck  me  at  once  as  very  witty.  I 
understood  a  little  later  that  she  was  the  author  of  papers  of  very 
conservative  tone  in*  the  Saturday  Review  of  the  late  'sixties, 
entitled  The  Girl  of  the  Period,  but  I  also  realized  that  she  was 
the  author  of  a  book  a  little  later  in  date,  which  had  particularly 
arrested  my  attention,  as  being  published  several  decades  in  ad- 
vance of  its  times — Joshua  Davidson. 

I  had  not  read  her  attacks  on  The  Girl  of  the  Period,  and  had 
I  done  so,  should  probably  have  thought  them  very  old-fashioned 
and  prejudiced.   The  curious  thing  was,  that  even  as  far  back  as 


THE  STORY  OF  MY  LIFE 


209 


the  'eighties,  these  seem  to  have  continued  as  her  views  regard- 
ing Woman  and  IVoinan  Suffrage. 

Her  enthusiasm  for  the  time  being,  the  end  of  the  'eighties, 
seemed  to  be  over  Frank  Harris.  She  could  at  one  time  talk  of 
httle  else  than  the  talents  she  ascribed  to  him;  his  marriage, 
approaching  or  accomplished,  and  his  position  as  Editor  of  the 
Fortnightly  Rcviciv.  According  to  her,  she  was  the  medium 
through  whom  he  met  his  wife.  He  was  going  to  be  the  wonder 
worker  of  the  immediate  future,  the  promoter  of  great  move- 
ments in  the  Press. 

Through  her  or  through  one  of  her  friends,  I  came  to  know 
Frank  Harris  and  his  wife.  I  could  see  they  were  not  a  happily- 
matched  pair,  though  the  wife  struck  me  as  a  nice,  kindly  woman. 
I  understood  she  had  considerable  property,  and  came  from 
Yorkshire,  but  I  can  not  vouch  for  the  correctness  of  this  remem- 
brance. I  believe  some  years  later  they  were  separated;  but 
through  the  early  'nineties  they  lived  in  one  of  those  funny,  little, 
squeezed  houses  in  between  the  big  ones  in  Park  Lane,  which  for 
all  I  know,  may  have  been  swept  away  by  millionaires'  mansions 
in  later  days. 

I  spent  the  later  months  of  the  summer  of  1888  at  a  house  in 
Liss  which  my  father  had  taken  for  rest  and  enjoyment.  It  was 
seven  years  before  the  days  of  the  perfected  Safety  bicycle,  and  I 
had  therefore  only  a  hired  carriage  or  my  own  legs  with  which 
to  explore  the  really  remarkable  beauties  of  East  Hants  and  West 
Sussex.  Within  an  area  roughly  marked  as  lying  between  Alton 
on  the  northwest,  Petworth  on  the  southeast,  Petersfield  on  the 
southwest  and  Blackdown  Hill  on  the  northeast  there  still  lies  one 
of  the  most  romantically  beautiful  portions  of  England.  I  revis- 
ited it  in  the  late  summer  of  1922  and  was  rejoiced  to  find  its 
beauty  unextinguished  by  gypsies,  chars-a-banc,  speculative  build- 
ers, military  camps,  or  golf  links.  The  extraordinary  loveliness  of 
Selborne  must  have  often  aroused  a  desire  for  its  extinction  in 
the  minds  of  beings  who  have  made  Bournemouth  hideous  and 
the  coast  of  West  Sussex  a  Walworth-Road-by-the-sea. 


210 


THE  STORY  OF  MY  LIFE 


In  November  I  was  given  my  formal  appointment  to  Mozam- 
bique. The  post  conferred  should  more  appropriately  have  been 
the  Shire  Highlands  (Zomba),  but  the  Consul  in  what  we  now 
call  Nyasaland  still  held  that  post  though  he  had  come  home  ill 
and  was  awaiting  a  transfer.  The  question  of  intervention  to 
determine  a  frontier  with  the  Portuguese  which  had  been  a  sub- 
ject of  dispute  since  the  days  of  Livingstone,  became  urgent  in 
the  winter  of  1888-9.  The  war  between  the  African  Lakes  Com- 
pany and  the  North  Nyasaland  Arabs  had  been  going  on  since 
1887.  Captain  F.  J.  Lugard  had  impulsively  gone  to  Nyasaland 
in  that  year  to  the  assistance  of  the  African  Lakes  Company,  and 
with  other  volunteers — notably  Alfred  Sharpe — was  endeavor- 
ing to  capture  the  principal  strongholds  of  the  Arabs  near  the 
northwest  corner  of  Lake  Nyasa,  which  strongholds — hedged  or 
mud- walled  towns — commanded  the  road  from  Nyasa  to  Tan- 
ganyika. 

The  modern  history  of  Nyasaland  of  course  begins  with  Liv- 
ingstone's discovery  of  the  Lake  in  1859.  The  south  shores  of 
Lake  Nyasa  were  either  sighted  or  actually  reached  by  a  Portu- 
guese (Jaspar  Bocarro)  early  in  the  seventeenth  century,  and 
enough  remained  of  his  report  to  give  it  a  vague  and  precarious 
existence  on  the  map  of  Africa,  enhanced  in  the  'forties  by  the 
assertions  of  the  German  missionary  Rebmann  that  it  was  there. 
Rebmann  (who  afterwards  spelled  his  name  with  a  single  ter- 
minal n)  was  a  Wiirttemberger  and  fellow-countryman  and  com- 
panion of  Dr.  Ludwig  Krapf  who  settled  in  and  explored  the  hin- 
terland of  Zanzibar  in  the  'forties  of  the  last  century.  While 
Krapf  wandered  inland  and  discovered  the  snow-crowned  volcano 
of  Kenya,  Rebmann  first  saw  and  proclaimed  the  existence  of 
Kilimanjaro.  He  came  into  contact  with  wandering  bands  of 
Anyanja  natives  of  Southwest  Nyasaland  ("Maravi")  and 
printed  an  exceedingly  interesting  vocabulary  of  their  language 
in  about  1856. 

Livingstone  and  Kirk  actually  reached  the  south  shores  of 
Lake  Nyasa  in  September,  1859.  The  preliminary  settlements 
of  British  missionaries  in  that  region  died  out  in  1862,  but  there 


THE  STORY  OF  MY  LIFE 


211 


was  an  exploring  mission  brought  there  by  Lieutenant  Young, 
R.  N.,  in  1867  to  investigate  the  false  rumor  of  Livingstone's 
death. 

In  1875,  as  one  of  the  effects  produced  by  Livingstone's  real 
demise  in  1873,  there  arrived  in  the  Shire  Valley  a  remarkable 
party  of  missionary  pioneers  under  the  leadership  of  one  of  the 
world's  great  men,  Dr.  Robert  Laws,  still  living  and  working  at 
the  time  these  lines  are  being  typed.  Next  came  the  mission  of 
the  Church  of  Scotland  in  1876  which  settled  in  the  Shire  High- 
lands. This  brought  out  or  provoked  the  coming  of  a  knot  of  lay 
workers — among  them  the  famous  John  Buchanan — from  whom 
was  afterwards  constituted  the  African  Lakes  Trading  Company. 
In  1883  the  first  Consul  (Capt.  Foot,  R.  N.)  was  appointed  to 
ward  off  aggression  on  the  part  of  the  Portuguese  and  endeavor 
to  forfend  attacks  from  the  slave-trading  Yao  chiefs. 

Lake  Nyasa  seemed  to  point  the  way  to  Lake  Tanganyika. 
The  expedition  in  1878  of  Consul  Elton,  Herbert  Rhodes  ^  and 
H.  B.  Cotterill  delimited  the  north  end  of  Lake  Nyasa.  The 
brothers  Moir  of  the  African  Lakes  Company  and  other  servants 
of  that  trading  association  wandered  across  the  elevated  Nyasa- 
Tanganyika  plateau  and  undertook  to  convey  to  Tanganyika  a 
small  steamer  for  use  on  that  lake  by  the  missionaries  of  the  Lon- 
don Missionary  Society.  This  was  done  in  about  1885.  Soon 
afterwards  the  African  Lakes  employes  at  Karonga  (N.W. 
Nyasa)  began  to  come  into  conflict  with  the  Arab  settlements  ten 
to  twenty  miles  inland.  These  Arabs  had  become  great  slave- 
traders  who  with  their  firearms  and  enrolled  fighters  from  Un- 
yamwezi  ravaged  the  naked  Negro  peoples  at  the  north  end  of 
Lake  Nyasa. 

The  transit  of  the  African  Lakes  Company's  men  such  as  John 
and  Frederick  Moir,  Monteith  Fotheringham  ("Montisi")  to  and 
fro  between  Nyasa  and  Tanganyika  inevitably  brought  them  into 
conflict  with  these  North  Nyasa  Arabs,  the  leader  or  "Sultan" 

1  Herbert  Rhodes  was  an  elder  brother  of  Cecil  Rhodes,  and  after  Elton's 
death  he  returned  from  North  Nyasa  to  the  Shire  Highlands.  He  lost  his 
life  in  i88o,  from  the  accidental  setting  on  fire  of  his  hut. 


212 


THE  STORY  OF  MY  LIFE 


of  whom  was  a  half-caste  named  or  nick-named  "Mulozi."  ^  Vast 
numbers  of  the  attacked  Negroes  attempted  to  take  refuge  under 
the  African  Lakes  Company  at  Karonga  and  other  stations  to 
escape  impressment  into  slavery  and  transport  to  the  Zanzibar 
coast.  These  Arabs — very  few  of  whom  were  of  pure  Arab 
blood,  most  of  them  being  half-caste  or  actually  Swahili  Negroes 
— attacked  the  Lakes  Company's  station.  Appeals  were  sent  for 
help  to  the  Shire  Highlands;  travelers  like  Lugard  and  Sharpe 
were  enrolled;  Captain  Lugard  in  1888  nearly  accomplished  a 
capture  of  the  chief  Arab  stronghold,  but  was  badly  wounded 
and  realized  that  without  cannon  an  entrance  into  the  forts  could 
not  be  effected, 

A  kind  of  indeterminate  truce  was  brought  about  in  the  begin- 
ning of  1889.  But  meantime  another  danger  arose,  the  expedi- 
tion of  Colonel  Serpa  Pinto  to  seize  the  upper  course  of  the  Shire 
River  and  establish  Portuguese  rule  at  the  south  end  of  Lake 
Nyasa.  Secondary  and  tertiary  causes  of  anxiety  to  the  growing 
Scottish-English  settlement  in  the  Shire  Highlands  arose  farther 
from  the  invasions  of  southwestern  Nyasaland  by  the  Angoni 
warriors;  and  the  advance  in  the  contrary  direction  from  the 
northeast  of  the  Muhammadan  Yao.  The  Angoni  were  mainly 
a  serf  population  of  Nyasa  stock,  disciplined  and  directed  by 
men  of  Zulu  origin,  descendants  of  the  "Bangoni"  Zulus  who 
had  invaded  western  Nyasaland  from  Matebeleland  in  the 
'twenties  of  the  nineteenth  century.  The  Muhammadan  Yao 
had  been  caught  by  Livingstone  invading  and  tyrannizing  over 
the  countries  of  the  Upper  Shire  and  southern  Nyasaland,  in  the 
'fifties  of  the  last  century.  Their  hostility  towards  the  whites 
was  so  strong,  in  1862,  1863,  that  it  balked  his  and  the  Uni- 
versities' Mission  projects  for  European  settlement  in  that  direc- 
tion. 

In  the  interval  of  time  between  1862  and  1882,  the  Angoni 
danger  had  ceased  or  only  affected  the  countries  west  and  east 
of  Lake  Nyasa ;  the  Yao  had  to  some  extent  settled  down,  though 
they  were  still  knit  up  with  the  slave  trade;  the  North  Nyasa 
1  /.  e.  "The  Wizard." 


THE  STORY  OF  MY  LIFE 


213 


Arabs  barred  the  way  to  Tanganyika,  but  their  hostility  was 
limited  by  the  pro-British  attitude  of  their  vaguely-recognized 
suzerain,  the  Sayyid  of  Zanzibar.  But  the  Portuguese  push 
towards  the  Upper  Shire  and  Nyasa  was  a  serious  menace  to 
any  extension  of  British  influence  north  of  Zambezi. 

By  the  early  part  of  1888  Sir  Hercules  Robinson  had  by  some 
proclamation  brought  the  limits  of  British  South  Africa  up  to 
the  course  of  the  Central  Zambezi.  It  will  be  seen  that  by  the 
summer  of  that  year  Lord  Salisbury  was  contemplating  the 
carrying  of  the  British  sphere  across  that  river,  east  of  the 
reasonable  claims  of  Angola  and  west  of  those  extending  from 
Mozambique.  But — I  gathered — in  the  autumn  or  winter  of 
1888,  his  projects  had  been  foiled  temporarily  by  the  recalci- 
trance of  Mr.  Goschen  who  had  replaced  Lord  Randolph  Church- 
hill  as  Chancellor  of  the  Exchequer,  and  who  was  one  of  the 
most  resolute  "Little  Englanders"  I  ever  encountered.  It  was 
suggested  that  I  should  endeavor  to  interest  his  private  secretary, 
Mr.  Clinton  Dawkins,  in  the  plans  suggested  for  the  solution 
of  the  Arab  problem  in  North  Nyasaland  and  the  extension  of 
British  influence  across  the  Zambezi.  I  made  the  attempt,  but 
Mr.  Dawkins  was  as  inconvertible  as  Mr.  Goschen,  not  in  the 
least  attracted  by  the  glamour  of  Central  Africa. 

(All  this  time,  between  September,  1888,  and  March,  1889, 
I  was  working  intermittently  at  my  first-published  novel,  The 
History  of  a  Slave:  an  attempt  to  give  a  "realistic"  picture  of 
Negro  life  in  Nigeria  and  across  the  Desert  to  Tripoli.  The 
portions  of  the  book  dealing  with  the  country  of  the  Cross 
River  were  truthful,  of  course;  much  of  the  interior  Nigerian 
scenes  were  not  drawn  from  direct  observation  but  from  the 
accounts  of  European  travelers  in  eastern  Nigeria.  The  illus- 
trations were  the  better  part  of  the  book,  some  of  them  having 
been  depicted  from  sheer  reality  in  Africa ;  others  from  Negro 
models  in  a  studio  at  Queen  Anne's  Mansions,  with  "properties" 
lent  by  the  Royal  Niger  Company.  The  work  appeared  first 
of  all  in  the  Graphic  in  1889 — the  Editor  being  much  abused 
by  parents  and  schoolmasters  for  the  impropriety  of  the  pictures. 


214 


THE  STORY  OF  MY  LIFE 


The  "impropriety,"  needless  to  say  was  only  in  their  imagination. 
The  Graphic  paid  me  well  for  this  story,  but  when  it  was  repub- 
lished a  year  later  in  book  form  it  proved  a  complete  failure.) 

In  March,  1889,  I  prepared  to  leave  London  for  Mogambique, 
the  Central  African  projects  temporarily  knocked  on  the  head 
by  Mr.  Goschen's  refusal  to  contribute  any  sum  towards  the 
cost  of  treaty-making,  and  by  the  indifference  which  the  Colonial 
Office  showed  to  Lord  Salisbury's  projects  for  enlarging  the 
British  Empire  in  Africa.  My  heavy  luggage  had  already  been 
despatched  to  Mogambique,  and  I  called  at  the  Foreign  Office 
to  bid  farewell  to  the  permanent  officials.  One  of  these.  Sir 
Villiers  Lister,  said:  "Before  you  go,  I'll  just  remind  Lord 
Salisbury  you  are  going  in  case  he  would  like  to  see  you."  A 
few  minutes  later  he  returned  and  said  I  could  go  in  and  bid 
his  Lordship  good  bye. 

I  entered  Lord  Salisbury's  room. 

"Since  we  last  met,"  he  said,  "there  has  been  a  change  in 
the  affairs  of  Nyasaland,  both  for  the  better  and  the  worse. 
The  Portuguese  seem  now  determined  to  push  the  matter  forward 
to  a  settlement  north  of  the  Zambezi,  either  by  taking  as  much 
as  they  can  get  or  coming  to  terms  with  us  over  Nyasaland. 
D'Antas,  the  Portuguese  minister,  was  here  yesterday — he  says 
by  the  bye  you  can  talk  Portuguese?  I  suggested  to  him  I 
might  send  you  over  to  Lisbon  to  talk  the  question  over  with 
their  ministers — Barros  Gomez,  for  example — and  see  whether 
it  is  possible  to  come  to  an  understanding  about  frontiers  which 
would  keep  the  Portuguese  out  of  the  Shire  Highlands  and 
Central  Zambezia.  Of  course  if  we  could  come  to  any  arrange- 
ment of  that  kind  it  would  be  a  capital  thing.  Do  you  think 
you  would  like  to  go  there  and  try?" 

I  expressed  my  great  willingness. 

"Very  well,  then.  Go  in  and  see  Lister  and  the  Chief  Clerk, 
and  make  the  necessary  arrangements." 

I  returned  to  Sir  Villiers  Lister's  room.  He  was  astonished, 
but  I  referred  him  back  to  Lord  Salisbury.  He  returned 
presently  and  said  I  had  not  been  mistaken.  Accordingly  the 
requisite  arrangements  were  made  and  incidentally  I  was  made 


THE  STORY  OF  MY  LIFE 


215 


use  of  to  convey  despatches  to  Queen  Victoria  who  was  at  San 
Sebastian  in  Spain,  and  other  bags  to  the  British  Embassy  in 
Madrid.  Our  Minister  and  Envoy  Extraordinary  at  Lisbon, 
the  Honble.  George  Petre — as  he  was  then — was  a  charming 
personage.  He  might  have  shown  himself  icily  neutral,  dis- 
agreeably unhelpful  over  this  mission,  so  abruptly  confided  to 
me.  On  the  contrary  he  did  his  utmost  to  make  my  negotiations 
successful.  Mrs.  Petre  had  been  at  Paris  during  the  'sixties, 
one  of  the  belles  of  the  period.  She  was  kindness  embodied. 
Her  stories  of  the  Second  Empire  fascinated  me  and  remained 
long  in  my  memory  so  that  I  incorporated  portions  of  them  in 
my  novel  The  Veneerings. 

Seiior  Barros  Gomez  of  course  spoke  French,  as  did  all  the 
other  Portuguese  ministers;  but  the  merchants  and  commercial 
personages  drawn  in  to  the  consultation  were  limited  to  the 
Portuguese  language,  and  it  was  certainly  an  advantage  that 
I  should  discuss  the  matter  with  them  directly.  After  a  week's 
argument  I  seemed  to  be  near  an  agreement  which  would  have 
conformed  pretty  closely  to  the  boundaries  of  to-day.  Then 
something  happened.  I  noticed  one  day  at  my  hotel  in  Lisbon 
a  very  English-looking  man-servant  talking  to  my  own  hench- 
man (Turner).  This  I  learned  was  the  valet  of  Seiior  Luis 
de  Soveral,  who  had  recently  come  into  notice  as  the  First 
Secretary  of  the  Portuguese  Legation  in  London.  The  Portu- 
guese Minister  in  London,  Sefior  d'Antas,  was  a  distinguished- 
looking  man  who  impressed  one  at  once  with  his  distinction, 
his  wide  knowledge  of  the  world.  Soveral  whom  I  had  seen 
once  or  twice  cursorily  did  not  make  on  me  so  favorable  an 
impression.  There  was  little  or  no  "distinction"  in  his  appear- 
ance; he  spoke  fluently,  even  in  1889,  the  English  of  London, 
and  he  had  had  the  good  fortune  to  attract  the  kindly  notice 
of  the  Prince  of  Wales.  D'Antas  was  elderly,  cared  for  none 
of  the  modern  card  games  or  sports,  spoke  but  little  English 
though  a  master  of  impeccable  French.  He  always  seemed 
inclined  to  advise  his  government  to  come  to  some  reasonable 
understanding  with  Britain  over  the  disposal  of  Africa. 

I  was  told  in  Lisbon  that  Soveral  belonged  to  a  family  that 


216 


THE  STORY  OF  MY  LIFE 


had  made  its  wealth  in  Brazil.  Soon  after  my  arrival  in  Lisbon, 
Several's  uncle,  avowedly  a  Brazilian  man  of  wealth,  called  on 
me  and  talked  about  his  nephew  in  London  whose  career  he 
was  supposed  to  have  helped  by  a  good  education  and  an  allow- 
ance which  enabled  him  to  meet  the  expenses  of  a  life  in  high 
circles.  He — Senor  Soveral  senior,  gave  me  a  splendid  lunch 
at  a  Lisbon  hotel,  and  toasted  the  future  friendship  and  under- 
standing between  Britain  and  Portugal. 

But  the  arrival  of  Luis  de  Soveral  himself  did  not  seem  to 
conduce  to  this  end.  He  intervened  in  the  negotiations  with 
the  foreign  minister  and  fresh  frontier  difficulties  arose.  The 
amendment  was  not  large  in  area  but  it  admitted  the  Portu- 
guese to  the  east  bank  of  the  upper  Shire,  and  made  the  Shire 
River  throughout  its  course  the  Anglo-Portuguese  frontier. 

Mr.  Petre  submitted  the  arrangement  with  misgivings  to  the 
consideration  of  the  Foreign  Office,  but  it  was  rejected,  because, 
of  course,  it  ceded  the  one  point  on  which  Lord  Salisbury  felt 
he  could  not  yield:  the  making  over  to  Portuguese  rule  of  the 
Shire  Highlands  on  which  the  British  missionary  and  coffee- 
growing  colonies  had  been  for  ten  or  twelve  years  established. 
I  admit  that  at  the  time  I  did  not  feel  the  point  so  keenly.  On 
the  map  the  concession  did  not  look  very  much,  nor  did  the 
actual  properties  and  plantations  of  the  missionaries  and  the 
settlers  cover  much  ground. 

Before  returning  to  England  I  obtained  a  week's  leave  in 
order  to  visit  Oswald  Crawfurd  and  his  wife  at  Oporto.  I 
much  enjoyed  this  sight  of  northern  Portugal  in  the  spring. 
Crawfurd,  whom,  although  Consul  in  Portugal's  second  most 
important  town,  I  always  pictured  as  living  in  Queen  Anne's 
Mansions,  was  in  the  north  of  Portugal  an  important  personage ; 
and  his  wife — as  already  mentioned  the  sister  of  Sir  Clare  Ford, 
Envoy  at  Madrid,  and  daughter  of  Richard  Ford  the  great  guide- 
book writer — was  hardly  less  so.  Oswald  Crawfurd  spoke 
Portuguese  admirably  well.  He  took  a  great  and  intelligent 
interest  in  the  Port  wine  cultivation  and  trade,  and  was  very 
learned  about  vineyards.    He  possessed  some  of  these  himself 


THE  STORY  OF  MY  LIFE 


217 


and  made  delicious  white  port  and  other  wines.  Of  these  he 
was  generous  to  his  friends,  and  for  years  afterwards  I  sup- 
ported many  a  convalescence  after  fever  in  y\frica  on  doses  of 
his  dehcious  white  port.^ 

Once  more  I  reached  London  and  began  preparing  for  deparr 
ture  to  East  Africa.  The  arrangement  with  Portugal  seemed 
to  have  broken  down,  through  the  intervention  (as  I  thought) 
of  Soveral;  and  the  haughty  disdain  of  Lord  Salisbury,  who  did 
not  like  the  Portuguese;  and  of  Philip  Currie  who  shared  this 
dislike.  One  day  before  I  left  I  received  an  invitation  from 
the  Revd.  John  Verschoyle,  the  sub-editor  of  the  Fortnightly 
Review,  to  come  and  dine  with  him.  "You  will  meet  an  extra- 
ordinary fellow,  over  from  South  Africa,  Cecil  Rhodes." 

As  a  matter  of  fact  I  had  first  heard  of  Cecil  Rhodes  in  1885, 
from  the  Revd.  John  Mackenzie.  Mackenzie  had  been  a  mission- 
ary of  the  London  Missionary  Society  who  had  acquired  a  great 
influence  over  the  Bechuana  people.  In  1885,  there  had  been 
taken  by  the  British  Government,  recovering  from  the  molluscous 
feebleness  of  the  Lord  Derby  of  that  period,  very  decided  action 
to  save  the  Bechuana  tribes  from  being  overridden  by  the  Trans- 
vaal Boers.  The  government  of  Kruger  had  conceived  the 
ambitious  project  of  stretching  across  Bechuanaland  towards 
German  Southwest  Africa  and  bringing  the  Boer  rule  up  to  the 
Zambezi  and  beyond.  Their  chiefest  enemies  and  exposers  at 
that  time  were  the  London  Missionary  Society's  agents,  and  John 
Mackenzie  had  passed  from  missionary  work  into  the  condition 
of  a  Government  agent.  He  had  somehow  aroused  the  rivalry 
and  enmity  of  Cecil  Rhodes  who  in  1885  was  a  member  of  the 
Cape  Parliament,  and  was  ranked  vaguely  as  a  Pro-Boer.  At 
least  he  was  such  in  Mackenzie's  opinion.  Now,  four  years 
had  passed  by,  and  this  same  Rhodes  was  in  London  hoping  to 

1  Oswald  Crawfurd  received  a  C.  M.  G.  for  his  Consular  services  at 
Oporto  somewhere  about  1893.  He  retired  soon  afterwards  and  died  about 
1908.  Mrs.  Crawfurd,  the  first  wife,  predeceased  him  about  1898.  He 
married  a  second  time.  In  1890,  he  published  a  book,  Round  the  Calendar 
in  Portugal,  which  was — is — one  of  the  few  works  in  English  really  describing 
the  Portuguese  with  knowledge  and  humor. 


218 


THE  STORY  OF  MY  LIFE 


get  a  Charter  given  to  a  proposed  company  he  was  founding 
which  was  to  step  in  north  of  the  Limpopo,  thanks  to  an  Agree- 
ment conckided  with  Lobengula.  They  would  get  various 
monopolies  of  mining  and  from  the  European  point  of  view 
would  rule  the  lands  north  of  the  Transvaal  and  perhaps  those 
of  Bechuanaland  as  well. 

I  accepted  Verschoyle's  invitation.  I  had  often  dined  with 
him  before  when  in  England,  from  the  beginning  of  1885. 
Though  sub-editor  of  the  Fortnightly  Review  he  was  also  curate 
in  a  large  Marylebone  living,  his  church — if  I  remember  rightly 
— being  that  of  St.  Mary.  How  he  became  sub-editor  of  this 
Review  I  do  not  know.  He  was  one  of  the  strangest  characters 
I  ever  encountered :  young,  rather  good-looking,  very  blond  and 
gray-eyed,  Ulster,  but  of  such  broad  theology  that  all  the  strait 
Christian  doctrines  seemed  to  have  slipped  through  the  meshes 
of  his  mind.  Nevertheless  he  was  really  a  hard  worker  in  his 
parish,  where,  attracted,  fascinated  by  the  breadth  of  his  theology 
I  sometimes  went  and  helped  him,  lectured  to  his  children  or 
his  old  people,  gave  away  prizes,  and  gave  some  of  the  prizes 
that  were  given  away.  I  seem  to  realize  that  Verschoyle  had 
no  more  "faith"  than  I  had;  yet  he  worked  desperately  hard 
as  an  Imperialist  and  a  kind  of  liberal  conservative.  He  did 
far  more  work  in  those  days  for  the  Fortnightly  Review  than 
Frank  Harris,  his  Editor.  He  had  rooms  of  a  certain  untidy, 
not-over-clean  magnificence  in  Fitzroy  Square,  which  I  believe 
is  on  the  easternmost  limit  of  W.  1.  Here  he  gave  at  a 
moment's  notice  large  dinners  or  small  and  cosy  ones  to 
Fortnightly  Review  contributors,  to  politicians  and  leaders  of 
movements. 

At  one  of  these  assemblages  at  the  end  of  April  or  beginning 
of  May,  1889,  I  met  Cecil  Rhodes.  Frank  Harris  was  there, 
whom  I  had  known  for  some  time.  He  was  brilliant  on  this 
occasion,  I  believe ;  so  in  a  dififerent  way  was  Walter  Pater,  and 
were  two  or  three  other  writers;  and  Verschoyle  was  in  high 
spirits,  with  broader  theology  than  ever.  But  for  me  interest 
in  what  Rhodes  was  saying  and  what  he  was  talking  of  doing 


Above:  A  native  of  the  Congo  Forest. 

BeloiL::  A  fine-looking  Bantu  Negro 
of  the  Upper  Congo  (a  Mungala). 


Above:  The  aristocratic  caste  of 
Equatorial  East  Africa. 

Beloiv:  A  very  prognathous  Bush- 
man from  the  Kalahani  Desert  in 
northern  Cape  Colony. 


THE  STORY  OF  MY  LIFE 


219 


extinguished  interest  in  every  one  else.  I  could  not  the  next 
day  remember  exactly  how  the  evening  party  had  ended.  After 
a  hesitating  quarter  of  an  hour  over  oysters  and  soup,  I  fell  to 
talking  with  Rhodes;  and  the  rest  of  the  company  faded  away. 
The  next  point  at  which  I  became  socially  conscious  was  after 
midnight,  when  to  Rhodes  and  me,  seated  still  talking  earnestly 
on  a  dusty  window  seat,  there  came  up  Verschoyle  who  said 
rather  crossly  .  .  .  "Sorry  to  seem  inhospitable;  but  I  must 
go  to  bed  and  get  up  early  to-morrow  morning.  Shall  I  whistle 
down  to  the  hall  and  ask  them  to  call  you  a  cab?"  We  assented, 
and  in  a  hansom  drove  to  Rhodes's  Westminster  Palace  Hotel, 
where  continuing  to  talk  till  daylight  we  settled  as  we  thought 
the  immediate  line  of  action  in  South  and  Central  Africa.  I 
jotted  down  on  paper  the  heads  of  the  scheme  I  was  to  propose 
to  Lord  Salisbury,  and  the  particulars  of  Rhodes's  references — ■ 
the  Rothschild  firm  especially. 

By  this  time  it  was  broad  daylight  and  the  sound  of  voices 
came  up  from  the  Broadway  outside.  The  ordinary  traffic  of 
the  streets  was  in  full  swing  on  a  fine  morning  in  early  May. 
"You  must  stay  and  have  breakfast  with  me,"  said  Rhodes. 
"Perhaps  you  would  like  a  wash  and  brush-up.  Hallo!  We're 
both  in  evening  dress !"  .   .  . 

"Well  I  will  share  your  breakfast,  and  then  take  a  hansom 
to  Queen  Anne's  Mansions  and  change.  The  banks  don't  open 
to  customers  before  ten  a.  m." 

"All  right.  I'll  write  you  a  check  on  account — something 
to  start  with  for  the  expedition  and  the  presents  to  chiefs,  and 
we'll  choose  a  man  to  go  out  with  you  on  our  behalf  and  be  under 
your  orders." 

At  this  time  I  was  conscious  of  occasional  rappings  at  the 
door  but  Rhodes  gave  them  no  attention :  he  opened  a  despatch 
box,  got  out  a  check-book  and  wrote  me  a  check  on  the  Bank 
of  England  for  two  thousand  pounds.  Then  he  shut  the  despatch 
box  and  passed  through  folding  doors  into  his  bedroom. 

The  knocking  outside  irritated  me.    I  went  to  the  door  and 


220 


THE  STORY  OF  MY  LIFE 


opened  it.  There  I  saw  an  angry-looking  man  who  interjected 
enquiringly:  "Mr.  Rhodes?" 

"These  are  Mr.  Rhodes's  rooms.    Have  you  an  appointment?" 

"No,  and  not  likely  to  have.  I've  come  to  see  him  to  get 
my  bill  settled.  ..." 

"Your  bill—?" 

"Yes.  Owin'  this  three  years.  .  .  .  His  clothes.  .  .  . 
Forty-seven  pounds.  .   .   . " 

I  went  in  and  knocked  at  the  double-doors.  Rhodes,  putting 
on  a  collar  and  tie,  came  forward.  .  .  .  "Here's  a  very  angry 
man — a  tailor — wants  a  bill  settled — Forty-seven  pounds.  .  .  ." 

Rhodes  looked  at  the  bill,  which  I  had  brought  with  me. 
"Why  .  .  .  it's  my  old  tailor!  Come  in,  man.  If  you  will 
be  such  a  fool  as  to  misdirect  your  letters  " 

He  broke  off,  went  with  a  collar  unbuttoned  to  the  despatch 
box,  got  out  the  check-book  and  wrote  a  check.  "There !" 
he  said  handing  it  to  the  tailor  who  was  trying  to  smooth  his 
face  into  an  amiable  aspect.  Then  he  remarked  with  an  altered 
voice,  "But  you've  made  a  mistake,  sir.  You've  written  'fifty' 
and  the  bill's  only  for  forty-seven." 

"It's  all  right.  I've  added  three  pounds  for  keeping  you 
waiting  three  years.  But  another  time  try  to  think  where  your 
customers  are,  and  if  a  man's  in  Africa  don't  address  his  letters 
to  Oxford  or  to  London." 

I  drove  back  presently  to  Queen  Anne's  Mansions  after  my 
nuit  blanche,  fortunately  with  a  light  great-coat  which  masked 
my  evening  dress.  Then  a  bath,  a  re-dressing,  and  reflection. 
I  decided  to  see  Sir  Percy  Anderson  at  the  Foreign  Office  before 
doing  anything  and  took  Rhodes's  check  with  me. 

His  was  fortunately  one  of  those  dispositions  not  easily  upset 
by  unexpected  news,  either  disastrous  or  embarrassingly  favor- 
able. Here  was  his  scheme — as  it  had  been,  since  our  first 
meeting  in  the  winter  of  1883 — rendered  possible — apparently — 
from  the  money  point  of  view.  A  man  had  come  forward 
offering  virtually  to  let  us  take  over  any  degree  of  Central  Africa 


THE  STORY  OF  MY  LIFE 


221 


between  the  Zambezi  and  the  White  Nile,  and  find  the  money 
to  run  it,  at  any  rate  until  such  time  as  the  British  public  should 
awaken  to  its  value.  And  he  gave  the  Rothschild  firm  as  his 
guarantee. 

"We'll  soon  test  that,  by  the  way,"  said  Sir  Percy,  leaving 
me  in  his  room  while  he  went  upstairs  to  the  Private  Secretary, 
who  had  some  kind  of  a  speaking  tube  or  a  telephone — if  there 
were  such  things  valid  in  1889 — which  communicated  with 
Rothschild's  office  in  the  city.  He  returned  in  about  twenty 
minutes.  "It's  all  right — about  Rhodes's  credit,  I  mean.  He's 
good  for  a  million  or  more." 

He  next  decided  to  see  Lord  Salisbury  and  ask  him  to  give 
me  an  interview.  Remembering  how  difficult  it  seemed  in  those 
days  to  get  speech  or  even  sight  of  Lord  Salisbury,  I  was  a 
little  surprised  at  learning  about  an  hour  afterwards  that  he 
would  see  me  at  five  o'clock  that  afternoon.  In  the  interval  of 
time  I  went  to  a  branch  of  the  Capital  and  Counties'  Bank 
different  to  the  one  where  I  kept  my  private  account  and  deposited 
Rhodes's  check  with  them,  asking  then  to  open  a  special  account 
for  my  forthcoming  expedition.  Then  I  started  for  the  Army 
and  Navy  Stores,  went  on  to  Silver's  in  Cornhill,  and  lastly 
to  Liberty's  in  Regent  Street  to  purchase  or  select  camp  equip- 
ment and  presents  for  native  chiefs,  confident  by  now  that  the 
great  journey  to  Nyasa  and  Tanganyika  was  coming  off. 

At  five  o'clock  I  was  shown  into  Lord  Salisbury's  room. 

As  usual  he  wasted  little  time  in  preliminaries,  but  he  only 
had  a  vague  idea  as  to  who  Rhodes  was.  .  .  .  "Rather  a  Pro- 
Boer  M.  P.  in  South  Africa,  I  fancy?"  I  supplied  a  little  more 
information.  One  of  his  brothers  was  already  a  Colonel  in  a 
regiment  of  the  Guards ;  another  had  been  an  explorer  of  Nyasa- 
land  and  had  died  there.  .   .  . 

However,  as  in  Sir  Percy's  case,  the  reference  to  the  Roths- 
childs seemed  to  weigh  most  surely.  Lord  Salisbury  even  hinted 
that  perhaps  the  best  solution  would  be  for  him  to  see  Mr. 
Rhodes.  ...  I  exclaimed  that  that  was  the  incident  Mr.  Rhodes 
most  acutely  desired.  .  .  .  Meantime,  he  added,  my  departure 


222 


THE  STORY  OF  MY  LIFE 


could  not  be  delayed  ...  we  had  already  become  uneasy  as 
to  Serpa  Pinto's  doings  ...  I  agreed  as  to  the  anxiety  and 
the  need  for  celerity  of  movement;  at  the  same  time  I  pointed 
out,  in  desperation,  that  a  projected  journey  into  the  very  heart 
of  Africa  and  negotiations  with  a  warlike  band  of  Arabs  could 
not  be  organized  in  two  or  three  days.  .  .  .  There  were  the 
treaty  forms  to  be  drafted  and  printed,  the  choice  of  a  lieutenant 
for  the  journey,  of  a  Vice  Consul  for  Mogambique  (Mr.  Rankin 
having  apparently  declined  to  stay  on  in  that  capacity)  the 
distribution  of  responsibilities,  the  question  even  of  funds.  Here 
Lord  Salisbury  intervened,  "It  would  be  preferable  that  the 
Foreign  Office  should  pay  your  traveling  and  treaty-making 
expenses  in  Nyasaland,  as  we  do  not  want  to  commit  ourselves 
to  handing  over  that  region  to  a  Chartered  Company.  Outside 
its  limits  I  see  no  objection  to  Mr.  Rhodes  paying  your  expenses 
and  meeting  the  cost  of  negotiations.  I  learn  also  that  inside 
Nyasaland  the  African  Lakes  Company  claims  to  have  concluded 
agreements  in  order  to  forestall  the  Portuguese.  However,  all 
that  must  be  looked  into  departmentally.  ..."  He  referred 
me  to  Sir  Percy  Anderson  for  the  arrangement  of  details  and 
bade  me  good  bye. 

I  went  to  see  Rhodes  a  day  or  two  afterwards  to  meet  the 
man  whom  he  had  chosen  as  his  representative  and  my  com- 
panion. I  must  admit  I  was  disappointed  as  to  his  judgment  and 
his  reasons  for  the  selection.  "My  dear  chap,"  he  said  when  the 
individual — whose  very  name  I  have  forgotten — left  his  sitting- 
room  at  the  hotel — "if  you  don't  like  him,  chuck  him  at  any  time. 
I  don't  guarantee  him.  He  is  good-looking  and  well  set  up, 
says  he  has  spent  several  years  in  the  army  out  in  South  Africa. 
.  .  .  He's  a  native  of  Cape  Town,  by  the  bye.  .  .  .  Rather 
fancy  I've  met  him  out  there.  .  .  .  Good  recommendations. 
.   .   .  But  chuck  him  at  once  if  you're  dissatisfied.  .   .  ." 

There  was  no  one  else  at  the  moment  offering;  this  man  at 
any  rate  professed  to  be  able  to  talk  Kafir  or  Zulu  and  had — 
he  said — been  a  long  way  "up  country,"  towards  the  Zambezi. 
I  gave  him  money  for  his  passage  to  Quelimane  via  Durban, 


THE  STORY  OF  MY  LIFE 


223 


letters  to  various  agents,  and  authority  to  draw  funds  at  Durban 
for  the  recruitment  of  twenty  Zuki  ex-soldiers  or  police,  if  he 
could  induce  them  to  sign  on  for  service  north  of  the  Zambezi.^ 
Fortunately  I  chose  the  agents  at  Durban  of  the  African  Lakes' 
Company,  for  the  furnishing  of  money,  and  they  were  cautious 
people. 

Then  occurred  another  hitch.  Suddenly  it  was  announced 
at  the  Foreign  Office  that  Mr.  Joseph  Chamberlain  was  going 
to  put  an  awkward  question  in  the  House  of  Commons  relative 
to  Mr.  Rhodes  and  his  application  for  a  Charter  to  be  given  to 
his  Company.  It  was  thought  the  question  asked  at  an  inoppor- 
tune moment  might  completely  dcrouter  Lord  Salisbury's  plans 
(I  can  not  say  why).  How  would  it  be  if  I — who  slightly  knew 
Mr.  Chamberlain  through  Captain  George  Goldie  Taubman  of 
the  Niger  Company — sought  an  interview  with  that  statesman, 
answered  any  questions  he  was  entitled  to  ask,  and  dissuaded  him 
from  putting  his  query  in  the  House?  So  I  wrote  to  Chamber- 
lain and  he  made  a  morning  appointment  at  his  house  in  Prince's 
Gate. 

I  was  shown  into  his  library  where  I  found  him  looking  at 
some  large  maps  of  Africa  suspended  on  a  wall  of  the  room. 
They  were  all  of  the  1862-1867  period.  He  had  nothing  later 
showing  even  an  approximate  sketch  of  the  great  rivers  and 
lakes.  Their  glazed  surface  was  recalcitrant  to  pen  and  ink, 
and  I  had  with  my  finger  nails  to  try  to  indicate  the  approximate 
outline  and  courses  of  rivers  and  lakes.  I  soon  gave  up  as  hope- 
less this  attempt  to  illustrate  Central  African  geography. 

Mr.  Chamberlain  was  very  quizzical.  He  professed  to  believe 
only  in  the  Niger  and  to  do  that  because  it  produced  palm  oil. 
As  to  Central  Africa,  he  was  not  much  affected  by  Portuguese 
claims;  he  was  only  anxious  that  no  injustice  should  be  done 
to  the  Boers.  I  explained  that  as  yet  the  Boers  only  inhabited 
portions  of  South  Africa,  were  scarcely  to  be  met  with  any- 

1  In  those  days  and  for  long  afterwards  the  Kafir-Zulus  of  South  Africa 
had  a  great  dread  of  Africa  north  of  the  Zambezi  as  they  suffered  so 
severely  from  malarial  fever. 


224 


THE  STORY  OF  MY  LIFE 


where  north  of  the  Limpopo — I  had  to  borrow  a  pen  and  sketch 
in  the  upper  course  of  the  Limpopo — and  that  if  he  wanted 
exact  information  as  to  the  steps  that  were  now  being  taken  it 
would  be  given  him  confidentially,  but  that  questions  asked  in 
Parliament  and  answered  under  present  circumstances  might 
create  an  awkward  situation.  He  agreed  therefore,  a  little  ironi- 
cally, to  suspend  any  further  action. 

At  last  I  was  ready  to  go,  in  the  second  week  of  May,  1889. 
My  servant  and  my  heavy  luggage  had  already  departed  from 
London  by  the  British  India  Company's  steamer.  I  was  to  catch 
this  up  at  Suez  and  had  about  ten  days  to  spare.  Sir  Percy 
Anderson  asked  me  to  spend  a  week-end  with  him  at  Hedsor 
Wharf,  an  exceedingly  pretty  old  house  of  Lord  Boston's,  on 
a  quiet  mile  of  the  Thames  below  the  Hedsor-Clieveden  heights. 
I  arrived  early  on  Saturday  afternoon,  and  met  for  the  first 
time  his  step-daughter,  Winifred  Irby,  who  was  to  be  my  wife 
in  later  years.  She  was  then  only  seventeen,  but  impressed  me 
as  being  very  grown-up.  She  took  me  for  a  walk  along  the 
river  bank  where  there  was  a  mile  of  "reserved"  water — really 
the  original  course  of  the  Thames.  Here,  many  years  before, 
a  new  river-bed  had  been  dug  for  the  Thames  to  the  west  and 
the  land  opposite  Clieveden  and  Hedsor  cliffs  had  become  a 
picturesque  island;  so  that  although  this  part  of  the  Thames 
Valley  was  only  some  twenty-five  miles  from  London,  it  was 
singularly  "private"  and  beautiful.  There  was  at  any  rate  a 
mile  of  quiet  water  ending  in  a  magnificent  weir,  and  rising  on 
the  east  in  some  six  hundred  feet  of  wooded  clifif  to  beautiful 
heights  beyond.  On  these  heights  in  beech  and  chestnut  woods 
of  great  stateliness  stood  Hedsor  House  where  my  wife's  brother. 
Lord  Boston,  was  living.  Hedsor  Wharf,  six  hundred  feet 
below,  was  orginally  a  riverside  farm,  which  had  been  sweetened 
into  a  picturesque  dwelling  with  lawns  and  flower  gardens 
between  it  and  this  tranquil  reach  of  river. 

Here  I  spent  a  quiet  week-end  with  Sir  Percy  Anderson,  his 
wife  and  step-daughter.  On  Sunday  we  went  up  to  Hedsor 
House  and  lunched  with  his  young  stepson,  Lord  Boston.  On 


THE  STORY  OF  MY  LIFE 


225 


the  Monday  Lady  Boston — who  when  her  son  shortly  afterwards 
married,  changed  her  surname  to  Anderson — took  me  to  CHeve- 
den,  then  belonging  to  the  Duke  of  Westminster.  Nobody  was 
at  home  (fortunately,  I  thought)  so  we  wandered  unhampered 
about  the  lovely  grounds.  As  a  last  picture  of  England  I  carried 
away  with  me  the  landscape  gardening  in  front  of  Clieveden 
House  in  the  middle  of  May. 


CHAPTER  X 


Lord  Salisbury  was  so  impatient  for  me  to  be  gone  and 
commence  my  treaty-making  that  it  was  useless  to  explain  that 
(in  those  days)  steamers  only  plied  between  England  and  the 
mouth  of  Zambezi  once  a  month.  So  having  despatched  my 
servant  and  my  very  extensive  baggage  from  the  London  Docks, 
I  decided  to  leave  myself  for  a  little  tour  in  Switzerland  and 
join  the  British  India  Company's  steamer  at  Brindisi  or  Port 
Said.  Sir  Villiers  Lister  advised  me  to  try  Bignasco  in  Italian 
Switzerland,  and  then  join  the  Brindisi  route  at  Milan  or  Bologna. 

Accordingly,  feeling  delightfully  free  of  care  and  without 
responsibility  I  arrived  at  Victoria  Station  one  morning  early, 
with  but  little  luggage.  The  booking  office  clerk  gave  me  a 
book  of  tickets  for  Locarno  at  the  head  of  Lago  Maggiore. 

Presently  I  espied  on  the  platform,  evidently  also  going  abroad, 
Douglas  Freshfield,  his  delightful  wife  (a  Ritchie  and  a  cousin 
of  Thackeray)  and  two  young  persons,  whom  I  afterwards  found 
to  be  a  daughter  and  a  niece.  I  greeted  them,  but  said  nothing 
about  my  momentous  designation  or  my  little  holiday  by  the 
way.  We  got  into  separate  compartments.  At  Calais  we  again 
greeted  one  another;  at  Basel  we  found  ourselves,  dishevelled  but 
hungry,  eating  breakfast  at  adjoining  tables.  At  Bellinzona  we 
were  associated  on  the  platform,  having  descended  here,  and 
left  the  great  express.  This  series  of  coincidences  began  to 
exasperate  me.  "Where  are  you  going?"  each  said  to  the  other 
before  we  entered  the  Locarno  train. 

"To  a  place  you  have  never  heard  of,"  I  said  rather  pompously, 
"To  Bignasco"  .   .  . 

"Bignasco — never  heard  of  it  ?  !"  gasped  Freshfield. 

"Why  we  created  the  place.  ...  I  am  part  owner  of  the 
hotel !" 

226 


THE  STORY  OF  MY  LIFE 


227 


However,  this  conjunction  bore  most  happy  fruit,  as  far  as 
I  was  concerned.  The  Freshfields  made  me  share  their  convey- 
ance or  conveyances  which  drove  us  for  some  twelve  rapturously 
beautiful  miles  from  Locarno  to  Bignasco,  along  the  wonderful 
Val  Maggia.  Bignasco  was  only  about  fifteen  hundred  feet  up, 
but  had  snow  heights  and  waterfalls  all  round.  The  wealth  of 
wild  flowers  about  the  place  in  May  was  something  I  have  never 
seen  the  equal  of  elsewhere,  in  or  out  of  Switzerland.  We  spent 
eight  days  in  this  Paradise,  and  then  moved  on  together  as  far 
as  Milan,  after  which  I  had  to  make  for  Brindisi  and  Africa, 
never  having  before  or  since  enjoyed  myself  so  completely. 

At  Zanzibar  I  was  the  guest  of  the  Euan-Smiths.  Sir  Charles 
Euan-Smith  had  been  the  eventual  successor  of  Sir  John  Kirk. 
He  was  an  Anglo-Indian  official  who  had  entertained  Royalties 
effectively  in  his  Indian  district,  and  partly  through  their  advocacy 
had  been  given  the  influential  post  in  East  Africa  vacated  by 
Kirk.  But  he  was  not  an  unwise  choice  for  the  work  that  had 
to  be  done.  He  had  a  good  command  of  French  and  Hindu- 
stani— for  various  reasons  both  important  languages  at  Zanzibar; 
he  was  lavishly  hospitable,  the  husband  of  a  delightful  wife, 
very  witty,  and  of  a  kindly  nature.  I  have  come  near  to  painting 
the  portraits  of  both  of  them  in  my  novel  The  Man  Who  Did  the 
Right  Thing — to  which  I  refer  any  meticulous  reader  who  wants 
a  closer  acquaintance  with  two  nice  people,  one  of  whom,  at 
any  rate,  is  now  dead.  (Sir  Charles  secured  the  British  Pro- 
tectorate over  the  Zanzibar  Islands  and  did  much  to  help  me 
in  Nyasaland.  He  was  then  promoted  to  be  Minister-resident 
in  Morocco,  and  went  to  Tangier  under  the  impression  that 
much  the  same  policy  was  favored  there ;  that  is  to  say,  that  he 
was  to  strive  to  obtain  a  British  Protectorate  over  Morocco. 
Whether  Lord  Salisbury  or  the  Foreign  Office  under  Lord  Rose- 
bery  encouraged  svich  an  idea,  which  would  have  incurred  the 
implacable  opposition  of  France  and  Spain,  I  can  not  say.  But 
Euan-Smith  ostensibly  failed  against  the  passionate  resistance 
of  the  Moorish  Government  and  was  withdrawn.    After  an 


228 


THE  STORY  OF  MY  LIFE 


interval  of  non-employment,  a  somewhat  grudging  justice  was 
done  him  and  he  was  nominated  Minister  to  Colombia,  South 
America.  He  never  went  there,  however,  and  retired  soon  after 
the  appointment  was  published.) 

To  a  great  extent,  I  find,  in  writing  one's  memoirs  one  has 
to  pronounce  an  opinion  on  people  from  a  personal  point  of 
view.  I  am  quite  willing  to  admit  that  X  may  have  been  a 
great  man,  but  as  I  found  him  in  the  circumstances  of  our  asso- 
ciation unamiable,  deceptive,  or  cantankerous  I  decide  for  myself 
that  he  is  to  be  described  with  much  qualified  praise  or  even  on 
a  note  of  blame.  Similarly  in  summing  up  a  man  like  Charles 
Euan-Smith,  since  he  helped  my  schemes  (which  I  knew  to  be 
honest  schemes),  since  he  was  delightfully  witty — what  a  quality 
that  is ! — since  he  brought  about  the  Protectorate  over  Zanzibar 
with  diplomatic  shrewdness,  I  am  disposed  to  judge  his  mistake 
in  Morocco  with  great  lenience  ( for  it  was  a  mistake  originating 
in  our  Foreign  Policy),  and  to  opine  that  if  he  had  been  per- 
suaded by  an  increase  of  salary  and  position  to  remain  in  Zanzi- 
bar, the  subsequent  history  of  British  East  Africa  would  have 
been  far  less  checkered. 

In  Zanzibar,  thanks  to  a  suggestion  from  Euan-Smith,  I  found 
the  very  man  to  suit  me  for  a  Vice-Consul,  an  Acting  Consul  at 
Mozambique  :  W.  A.  Churchill.  Seeing  how  much  time  pressed, 
how  every  day  counted  in  the  race  against  Serpa  Pinto,  this 
was  most  fortunate,  for  I  suspected  I  should  have  to  be  long 
absent  from  the  coast  and  my  Consular  headquarters. 

W.  A.  Churchill  was  the  son  of  a  particularly  Consular  family. 
His  father  had  long,  long  ago  been  Consul  General  at  Algiers 
and  had — much  too  good-naturedly — exchanged  that  post  with 
Sir  Lambert  Play  fair  for  Zanzibar;  and  there  he  died  at  the 
commencement  of  Sir  John  Kirk's  career.  William  Churchill's 
two  brothers,  Sydney  and  Harry,  rose  high  in  the  Consular 
career,  but  it  seemed  to  the  much  younger  William' that  there 
was  no  opening  for  him.  Three  brothers  in  the  same  service 
might  seem  too  much  indulgence  for  the  Foreign  Office.  So  he 
came  out  modestly  to  Zanzibar  and  took  up  a  position  there  in 


THE  STORY  OF  MY  LIFE 


229 


a  mercantile  house.  Sir  Charles  Euan-Smith  pointed  him  out 
to  me  and  laid  stress  on  the  fact  that  he  had  a  gift  for  languages. 
I  engaged  him  on  this  recommendation  and  found  I  had  secured 
a  treasure.  He  soon  learned  Portuguese;  he  already  knew 
French,  Italian  and  Swahili,  and  everything  else  a  Consular 
officer  should  know.  If  he  be  dead  now,  it  is  pleasant  to  know 
by  his  record  that  he  had  a  long  and  successful  Consular  career. 

Owing  to  the  fact  that  he  was  so  competent  I  was  soon  ready 
to  leave  Mogambique  with  my  Swahili  followers,  the  fifteen 
men  who  were  my  nucleus  of  a  caravan. 

Moqambique  in  1889  was  not,  I  suppose,  very  different  to 
Mogambique  in  1922.  It  was  a  little,  narrow,  flat  island,  scarcely 
more  than  two  miles  long,  situated  rather  out  at  sea  on  the  south 
side  of  not- very-broad  Mozambique  Bay,  with  the  much  larger 
Mokambo  Bay  to  the  south  and  Conducia  Bay  to  the  north. 
A  flat  and  mangrovey  projection  of  the  mainland  was  a  mile 
and  a  half  to  two  miles  distant  on  the  west.  The  harbor  on 
the  north  side  was  fairly  good  and  admitted  ships  drawing  not 
more  than  twenty-six  feet.  The  coasts  all  round  about  were  flat 
and  fringed  with  mangroves.  The  only  piece  of  high  land  visible 
was  a  flat-topped,  table  mountain  called  by  the  Portuguese  "Mesa" 
and  situated  some  fifteen  miles  to  the  northwest. 

In  1889  the  power  of  the  Portuguese  over  the  mainland  and 
the  Makua  tribe  was  so  non-existent  that  their  soldiers  dared 
not  land  opposite  Mogambique,  and  the  only  point  to  the  north 
was  the  town  of  Ibo,  also  on  an  island,  in  about  13°  of  S.  latitude. 
South  of  Mogambique  they  held  no  landing-place  till  you  came  to 
Quelimane  which  was  situated  at  the  northern  extremity  of  the 
Zambezian  Delta.  Then  again,  south  of  the  Zambezi  there  was 
little  or  no  sign  of  Portviguese  occupation  or  civilization  till  you 
came  to  Inyambane.  South  of  the  Limpopo  mouth  there  was 
Delagoa  Bay.  But  the  town  of  Lourengo  Marquez  on  the  shores 
of  that  inlet  was  only  marked  by  one  or  two  ramshackle  houses, 
prior  to  1870.  As  soon  as  the  southern  half  of  Delagoa  Bay  was 
claimed  by  the  British  under  the  gift  or  sale  of  a  local  chief  in 
the  early  part  of  the  nineteenth  century,  the  Portuguese  awoke  to 


230 


THE  STORY  OF  MY  LIFE 


its  importance  and  raised  counter  claims  of  the  eighteenth  and 
seventeenth  centuries  which  were  admitted  by  the  arbitrator.  But 
I  must  confess  that  I  who  had  been  and  remained  a  pro-Portu- 
guese after  my  West-coast-of-Africa  journeys  in  1882-83  was 
not  able  in  1889  to  feel  very  strongly  as  their  advocate  in  regard 
to  East  Africa.  They  were  then  probably  to  be  seen  at  their 
best — a  very  seedy  best — on  and  near  the  lower  Zambezi — Que- 
limane,  Sena,  and  Tete.  And  here,  one  felt  they  had  been  much 
awakened  and  strengthened  by  the  interposition  of  Livingstone 
in  1858-63. 

There  were  one  or  two  quite  imposing  streets  and  fine,  hand- 
some houses  in  Mozambique  which  dated  from  the  eighteenth 
and  early  nineteenth  centuries.  One  of  these  was  the  British 
Consulate,  apparently  a  house  rented  from  a  Portuguese  owner, 
but  almost  a  palace,  with  agreeable,  flat  roof-spaces  for  seats  and 
promenades,  and  a  garden  quite  respectable  in  size  considering 
the  smallness  of  the  island. 

In  the  course  of  a  fortnight,  with  much  help  from  Churchill,  I 
had  completely  furnished  the  house  and  redecorated  some  of  the 
rooms.  We  had  to  help  us,  besides  my  English  servant  and  my 
black  butler,  a  curious,  crippled,  somewhat  negroid  American 
sailor,  whom  Churchill  had  drawn  in  out  of  pity  (he  was  ship- 
wrecked, poverty-stricken,  and  desolate).  I  may  have  remained 
there  more  than  a  fortnight,  waiting  for  sea  transport  to  the 
Zambezi ;  but  I  know  in  the  time  we  accomplished  marvels  of 
cleansing,  repapering,  painting  and  decoration;  we  reduced  the 
acre  of  garden  to  orderliness  and  husbandry  from  a  condition  of 
wild  jungle ;  and  when  I  returned  to  Mogambique  early  in  1890, 
the  house  and  its  surroundings  seemed  to  me  charming  and  home- 
like. The  crippled  American  sailor  was  still  there.  He  stayed  on 
past  my  recollection  of  the  place. 

At  last  the  surveying  gun  vessel,  H.M.S.  Stork,  came  in  with 
confirmatory  news  about  Daniel  Rankin's  discovery  of  several 
months  earlier :  the  Chinde  mouth  of  the  Zambezi,  which  at  high- 
tide  had  some  seventeen  to  nineteen  feet  of  water  on  its  bar, 
perhaps  more.    Rankin  who  had  come  out  to  Nyasaland  with 


THE  STORY  OF  MY  LIFE  231 

Consul  Foote  eight  or  nine  years  previously,  had  latterly  attached 
himself  to  the  Mozambique  Consulate  and  become  a  Vice  Consul 
there.  He  had  learned  the  Makua  language  as  well  as  Swahili, 
and  had  printed  stories  and  legends  in  both,  particularly  in  the 
dialect  of  Makua  (which  he  called  I-tugulu)  spoken  on  the  main- 
land round  about  Mozambique.  I  don't  think  I  ever  saw  him. 
He  disappeared  from  the  Mozambique  Consulate  before  I  came 
there,  though  I  fully  appreciated  his  services  in  discovering  the 
Chinde  branch  of  the  Zambezi  Delta. 

This  discovery,  indeed,  almost  of  itself  altered  the  fate  of 
Nyasaland.  Hitherto,  so  far  as  I  understood  the  Livingstone 
problem,  no  entrance  into  the  sea  from  the  Zambezi  Delta  regis- 
tered a  greater  depth  of  water  at  high  tide  than  ten  or  eleven  feet. 

Ocean-going  vessels  of  so  little  draught  were  not  safe  along  the 
agitated  East  African  seas  from  Somaliland  to  the  Zambezi 
mouths.  Of  course  there  were  exceptional  cases  in  Livingstone's 
time,  the  early  'sixties,  and  later  in  the  'seventies,  of  vessels — 
small  steamers — leaving  the  Thames  and  steaming  out  past  the 
Cape  of  Good  Hope  or  through  the  Suez  Canal,  drawing  no  more 
than  ten  feet  and  entering  the  Zambezi  River  through  one  of  the 
southern  openings.  Once  in  the  Zambezi,  they  might  in  those 
days  of  fuller  streams  have  passed  up  the  Shire  River  to  its  first 
cataracts.  Such  a  journey  had  been  made  traditionally  in  the 
early  'eighties  by  the  Lion,  a  little  cargo  steamer  from  London 
drawing  ten  feet.  But  for  one  such  successful  effort  the  propor- 
tion of  disappointments  and  disasters  was  disheartening.  Now 
Rankin  had  discovered,^  and  the  Stork  had  verified  and  proved 
by  its  own  passage  into  the  Zambezi  though  drawing  thirteen  and 
a  half  feet,  the  practicability  of  the  Chinde  mouth.  This  was  one 
of  the  northern  outlets  of  the  great  river,  not  very  far  south  from 

1  The  discovery  was  really  made  by  a  Portuguese  planter  who  reported 
it  to  Mr.  Rankin  who  in  turn  transmitted  the  rumor  to  the  Royal  Scottish 
Geographical  Society.  This  body  in  1888  made  a  grant  of  money  to  Mr. 
Rankin  to  enable  him  to  investigate,  with  the  result  that  he  verified  the 
discovery  at  the  beginning  of  1889.  When  Rankin  crossed  the  Chinde  bar 
it  was  the  full  wet  season  and  he  found  a  depth  at  high  tide  of  twenty-one 
feet.  But  the  lowest  depth  all  the  year  around  in  those  days  was  not  less 
than  seventeen  feet,  and  the  average  was  nineteen  feet. 


232 


THE  STORY  OF  MY  LIFE 


Quelimane.  Vessels  drawing  thirteen  feet  could  be  depended  on 
as  thoroughly  sea-going,  able  to  navigate  the  Indian  Ocean,  and 
such  could  now  enter  the  Zambezi  Delta  and  steam  up  the  undi- 
vided river  channel  beyond  the  maze  of  mangrove  creeks. 

This  is  what  the  Stork  did  with  me  in  July,  1889.  I  had 
actually  traveled  from  Aiogambique  to  Quelimane  in  an  ordinary 
mail  steamer,  with  the  nucleus  of  my  expedition  on  board.  This 
nucleus  consisted  of  an  English  soldier-servant  (Turner),  my 
old  headman  of  Kilimanjaro  days — Ali  Kiongwe — and  fifteen 
Makua  porters  engaged  "with  the  consent  of  the  Portuguese 
authorities"  at  Moqambique.^ 

The  British  Vice-Consul  at  Quelimane — Alexander  Carnegie 
Ross,  who  after  a  long  and  distinguished  Consular  career  is  still 
Consul  General  at  San  Francisco — told  me  he  had  heard  a  dis- 
turbing rumor  that  a  Portuguese  official  named  Cardozo  had  just 
tried  to  induce  the  Yao  chief  Mponda,  who  had  a  large  town  near 
the  exit  of  the  Shire  River  from  Lake  Nyasa,  to  sign  a  treaty 
declaring  himself  a  Portuguese  subsidiary.  Otherwise  there  was 
no  sign  that  the  Portuguese  were  attempting  to  interfere  with 
the  Upper  Shire  or  any  portion  of  Nyasaland  where  our  influence 
was  dominant. 

I  had  already  heard  at  Mogambique  that  the  man  I  had  engaged 
in  London  to  represent  the  British  South  Africa  Company  had 
arrived  at  Quelimane  without  any  Zulu  escort  or  any  equipment, 
and  had  become  such  a  wastrel  and  drunkard  that  he  had  either 
been  sent  away  by  Mr.  Ross  to  avoid  trouble,  or  had  himself  left 
and  gone  back  to  Natal.  Fortunately  I  encountered  at  Quelimane 
Mr.  John  L.  Nicoll  of  the  African  Lakes  Company,  going  home 
on  leave.  I  engaged  him  as  my  assistant  and  he  ultimately 
became  a  Vice  Consul. 

The  Portuguese  officials  at  Quelimane  showed  me  no  ill-will 

1 1  put  the  words  about  the  porters  in  quotation  marks  as  they  come 
from  an  old  report  to  the  Foreign  Office.  The  Portuguese  Governor-General 
at  Mogambique  seemed  at  the  time  of  my  preparation  to  have  no  knowledge 
of  Colonel  Serpa  Pinto's  intentions  forcibly  to  annex  the  Shire  Highlands 
region,  and  consequently  showed  no  opposition  or  unfriendliness  in  respect 
of  my  expedition  to  the  Shire  and  Lake  Nyasa. 


Sergeant-major  Ali  Kiongwe,  the  author's  faithful  Zanzibar!  assistant  between 

1884  and  1901. 


THE  STORY  OF  MY  LIFE 


233 


when  they  heard  I  was  proceeding  to  Lake  Nyasa  throuj^h  the 
Shire  Highlands,  and  was  intending  to  enter  the  Zambezi  directly 
by  the  newly  discovered  Chinde  River.  Hitherto,  of  course,  for 
many  years  since  the  Livingstone  period,  every  one  had  gone  to 
the  Shire  by  way  of  Ouelimane  and  paid  some  measure  of  duty 
on  all  goods  and  merchandise,  save  mere  personal  luggage.  They 
had  made  their  way  up  to  the  Kwakwa  River  (on  the  estuary  of 
which  the  town  of  Quelimane  was  situated)  and  then  passed 
along  this  narrowing  stream  till  they  were  only  a  few  miles  from 
the  Zambezi  banks.  Apparently  the  last  portion  of  the  journey 
to  the  port  of  Vicenti  situated  on  the  left  bank  of  the  main  Zam- 
bezi River  was  made  along  a  narrow,  artificially-dug  canal. 
Actual  water  communication  between  the  Zambezi  and  the  Kwa- 
kwa seemed  to  have  dried  up  or  been  blocked  by  growth  of  water 
vegetation.  From  Vicenti  the  African  Lakes  Company's  river 
steamers  plied  easily  in  those  days  up  and  down  the  Zambezi- 
Shire  Rivers  to  the  port  of  Katunga  on  the  Shire,  just  below  the 
Highlands. 

Our  experience  was  very  different.  Mr.  Nicoll  was  left  at 
Ouelimane  to  obtain  a  fresh  equipment  and  regain  the  Shire  by 
the  orthodox  route.  My  caravan,  my  luggage  and  myself  were 
transferred  to  the  Stork,  which  put  to  sea,  found  the  Chinde  bar, 
steamed  across  it  without  let  or  hindrance,  and  anchored  off  the 
south  bank  of  the  Chinde  River.  There  were  no  natives  to  be 
seen.  But  the  ground  on  the  south  side  of  this  estuary  had  been 
cleared.  After  a  short  pause  we  pulled  up  anchor  and  prudently, 
with  much  sounding,  steamed  up  the  Chinde,  the  largest  ship  of 
all  previous  time  to  have  penetrated  the  Delta  of  the  Zambezi. 
Without  any  incident  or  interruption  our  voyage  went  on  sedately 
— we  felt  we  were  making  history — till  we  came  into  sight  of  the 
Portuguese  towns  of  Mazaro  on  the  south  bank  and  Vicenti  on 
the  north.  Then  arose  a  clamor  of  native  voices,  distant  but  so 
great,  so  amazed  and  awe-inspired  that  we  reahzed  the  part  we 
were  playing.  No  such  sight  had  ever  been  seen  on  the  Zambezi 
before;  so  large  and  powerful  a  ship  had  never  hitherto  pene- 
trated its  waters.    We  did  not  stop  at  either  place  but  steamed 


234 


THE  STORY  OF  MY  LIFE 


on  slowly,  cautiously.  The  commander  (Balfour,  son  of  the 
Edinburgh  botanist  professor)  aspired  at  first  to  push  as  far  as 
the  Zambezi-Shire  junction,  to  some  point  which  might  be  argued 
to  lie  beyond  the  agreed  limits  of  Portuguese  rule.  However, 
as  any  arrest  of  the  Stork  on  a  Zambezi  sandbank  might  awaken 
contentions  and  difficulties  her  course  was  stopped  near  Vicenti 
and  we  continued  our  journey  to  the  Shire  in  a  flotilla  of  boats 
till  we  encountered  the  African  Lakes  Company's  river  steamer, 
James  Stevenson,  near  Morambala. 

Morambala  Mountain  is  the  first  noteworthy  piece  of  scenery 
encountered  on  the  progress  up  the  Shire.  It  is  an  abrupt,  pic- 
turesque highland  of  about  four  thousand  feet  in  height,  an  out- 
lying ridge  of  the  mountainous  region  which  lies  westward  of 
Mogambique  and  east  of  the  Shire.  This  is  still  an  insufficiently 
explored  part  of  East  Africa  and  includes  the  patch  of  the 
Mlanje  Mountains,  nearly  ten  thousand  feet  in  elevation  at  its 
highest  point;  also  the  Chiga  range  and  Mubwi  Hills — three  to 
four  thousand  feet,  due  east  of  Mogambique — the  noteworthy 
Mabo  Mountains  (7-8,000  ft.)  ;  and  the  fantastic  peaks  and  table- 
lands of  Namuli  (8,000  ft.),  the  stately  cone  of  Chiperone  (8,000 
ft.),  and  the  famous  Shire  Highlands  (3-7,000  ft.),  from  Mt. 
Cholo  on  the  south  near  the  Ruo  River,  to  Lisiete  on  the  north 
near  the  Lujenda  and  Lake  Nyasa.  Among  these  mountains 
Mlanje  is  the  most  noteworthy,  as  it  is  the  loftiest.  Above  six 
thousand  feet  it  grows  the  Mlanje  "cedar"  {IViddringtonia 
whyfei),  a  conifer  of  southern  type  elsewhere  appearing  on  the 
mountains  of  Cape  Colony  and — it  is  said — on  one  height  of 
seven  thousand  feet  on  the  Congoland-Zambezia  frontier.^  It  is 
not  of  course  a  true  cedar — much  abused  name! — True  cedars 
are  only  found  in  the  Atlas  range  of  North  Africa,  in  the  Leba- 
non, and  the  Himalayas — but  belongs  to  the  Cypress  group  of 
conifers,  though  in  growth  and  aspect  it  is  singularly  like  a  cedar. 
This  Widdringtonia  was  one  of  the  many  discoveries  of  my  seven 
years  in  Nyasaland. 

1  Widdringtonias  once  inhabited  France  in  the  Eocene  and  early  Miocene 
and  gradually  passed  southward  through  Africa. 


THE  STORY  OF  MY  LIFE 


235 


At  Morambala  we  bade  farewell  to  Commander  Balfour  and 
the  staff  of  the  Stork  who  had  performed  such  a  daring  and  note- 
worthy feat  in  conveying  our  expedition  to  the  Shire  River.  The 
James  Stevenson,  a  steamer  of  forty  tons  capacity  belonging  to 
the  African  Lakes  Company,  was  to  perform  the  rest  of  the  river- 
transport  to  the  port  of  Blantyre  (Katunga)  on  the  Shire  of  the 
cataract  region. 

But  from  her  captain  we  learned  (1)  that  Colonel  Serpa 
Pinto's  expedition  lay  encamped  on  the  Shire's  banks  between  us 
and  the  Ruo  confluence  and  (2)  that — worse  by  far  than  the 
Portuguese — the  rebel  chief  Mlauri,  whose  village  lay  on  the 
west  bank  of  the  Shire  not  far  from  Katunga,  might  forcibly 
prevent  the  James  Stevenson  from  reaching  Blantyre's  Port. 

Mlauri  was  either  one  of  the  fourteen  or  fifteen  so-called 
Makololo  brought  to  the  Shire  by  Livingstone,  or  he  was  the  son 
of  one  of  them.  He  believed  himself  entitled  to  recognition  as 
the  chief  Makololo  potentate;  and  because  this  recognition  was 
withheld  by  the  British  Consul  he  was  practically  at  war  with  the 
white  people. 

On  reaching  the  vicinity  of  Serpa  Pinto's  camp,  just  below 
what  we  regarded  as  the  "British  frontier" — the  Ruo-Shire  con- 
fluence— a  boat  came  off  enquiring  through  a  Portuguese  officer 
if  I  were  on  board  and  in  that  case  if  I  would  come  off  and  see 
the  Colonel  on  shore.  I  agreed  to  go,  though  the  white  men  on 
board  the  steamer  thought  I  was  going  to  be  arrested  and  de- 
tained. My  reception  and  treatment  were  quite  otherwise.  I 
knew  all  about  Serpa  Pinto's  remarkable  exploration  of  Angola 
and  his  passage  thence  on  the  reverse  of  Livingstone's  route, 
down  the  Upper  Zambezi  and  across  to  Lake  Ngami  and  the 
Transvaal.  I  spoke  to  him  in  Portuguese  on  reaching  his  camp. 
He  answered  me  in  that  tongue,  and  then  continued  in  very  good 
English,  so  that  we  carried  on  the  conversation  in  that  language 
over  a  thoroughly  "English"  tea  and  mixed  biscuits.  He  told  me 
he  was  on  his  way  up  the  Shire  to  reach  Mponda,  the  Yao  chief 
at  the  south  end  of  Lake  Nyasa,  "who  had  concluded  a  treaty 
with  the  Portuguese,"  but  that  the  Makololo  were  opposing  his 


236 


THE  STORY  OF  MY  LIFE 


progress  and  threatening  to  fight  him.  As  he  seemed  to  be  ques- 
tioning me  regarding  his  Hne  of  conduct  I  was  quite  frank.  I 
said  he  could  force  his  way  through  as  he  had  several  hundred 
men  with  him  and  a  strong  expedition ;  but  that  his  victory  would 
almost  certainly  lead  to  hostilities  between  Britain  and  Portugal. 
"But  all  I  want  is  to  see  Mponda." 

"Now,  Colonel,"  I  answered,  "what  possible  interest  can  there 
be  for  you  in  a  small  chief  at  the  south  end  of  Lake  Nyasa,  that 
you  would  risk  a  serious  misunderstanding  with  my  country  in 
forcing  your  way  there  ?  You  have  a  very  powerful  expedition, 
I  can  see.  We  were  told  its  destiny  was  to  be  the  bringing  of  the 
great  region  of  Portuguese  Zambezi  under  effective  control  as 
far  as  Zumbo — a  long  way  off — and  we  did  not  object.  Why  not 
go  there  and  do  that  ?  Why  quarrel  with  us  over  the  small  dis- 
trict of  the  Shire  Highland?  We  recognize  the  east  shore  of 
Lake  Nyasa  as  Portuguese,  and  altogether  some  three  hundred 
thousand  square  miles  between  the  Zambezi  and  Delagoa  Bay  and 
between  the  lower  Shire  and  the  Ruvuma  River.  Why  force  on 
a  quarrel  over  this  small  area  that  no  Portuguese  has  ever 
visited?" 

He  seemed  impressed  by  what  I  said  and  promised  to  give  the 
matter  his  consideration.  I  believe,  indeed,  he  did  so,  and  soon 
afterwards  left  the  Shire  River  and  returned  to  Mozambique, 
giving  up  his  command  to  Lieutenant  Coutinho  who  appears  to 
have  been  the  main  agent  in  combating  the  Makololo  and  threat- 
ening the  Shire  Highlands. 

The  James  Stevenson  continued  her  voyage,  but  a  much  more 
serious  enemy  remained  to  be  encountered  in  the  person  of 
Mlauri,  the  recalcitrant  Makololo  chief.  Before  reaching  his 
stronghold  however  on  the  right  bank  of  the  Shire  we  stopped 
on  the  outskirts  of  Elephant  Marsh  to  take  in  wood  for  burning; 
and  I  decided  to  go  on  shore  with  a  rifle  and  a  sketch-book.  I 
heard  distant  shots  as  though  some  sportsman  had  preceded  me. 
Presently  I  almost  stumbled  over  the  carcass  of  a  magnificent 
waterbuck  which  had  just  fallen  and  expired.  It  had  such  a 
splendid  head  that  I  put  my  rifle  down,  and  began  to  sketch  it. 


THE  STORY  OF  MY  LIFE 


237 


Presently  I  heard  the  dry  burnt  stalks  of  the  long  reeds  snapping 
and  realized  some  one  was  standing  behind  me.  I  looked  round. 
It  was  a  comparatively  young  and  active  man  with  bright  eyes, 
clad  in  a  blue  shirt  much  blackened  about  the  sleeves  with  the 
burnt  grass,  breeches  or  knickerbockers  tucked  in  gaiters.  He 
wore  a  stout  felt  hat,  and  although  so  carelessly  costumed  one 
felt  from  his  pleasant  voice  that  he  was  a  gentleman.  He  asked, 
with  deprecation  of  greed,  if  I  had  shot  this  beast  or  he.  "I  fired 
at  two  of  them  and  brought  down  one  which  I  see  is  a  female. 
Did  I  kill  the  male  as  well  ?" 

"Yes,  you  must  have  done.  I  have  not  fired  my  rifle.  But  I 
thought  'what  an  opportunity  for  a  sketch.'  Do  you  want  to  take 
it  away?" 

"Only  when  you've  done  with  it.    Are  you — are  you  Consul 
Johnston?" 
"Yes." 

"My  name  is  Alfred  Sharpe.  I'm  coming  back  to  Nyasaland 
for  a  shoot.    My  boat  is  tied  up  near  here." 

The  recent  history  of  Nyasaland  came  into  my  mind.  He  was 
— I  found — the  Alfred  Sharpe  who  had  been  wounded  in  the 
first  fighting  with  the  Arabs  and  had  gone  to  Natal  to  be  healed 
of  his  wound.  Here,  it  seemed,  was  the  very  man  I  was  looking 
out  for,  to  take  the  place  of  the  utter  disappointment  from  South 
Africa.  Whilst  I  mused  and  sketched,  he  proposed  making  tea 
for  us  at  his  boat  and  using  the  milk  of  the  female  waterbuck  he 
had  killed.  Her  vidder  was  full.  I  consented  willingly  to  have  a 
cup,  and  over  it  we  talked  rapidly  and  decisively.  He  told  me  he 
had  held  a  Colonial  appointment  in  Fiji,  but  it  and  many  others 
had  been  cut  off  to  effect  economies ;  that  the  Colonial  Office  had 
offered  him  instead  a  post  on  the  Gold  Coast,  but  in  the  meantime 
he  had  had  a  great  yearning  to  shoot  big  game  in  Africa;  that  it 
was  not  altogether  wasted  time,  as  in  1887  he  had  killed  elephants 
enough  to  bring  him  in  a  considerable  sum  of  money.  Then  he 
had  got  mixed  up  in  the  Arab  war,  was  shot  in  the  leg,  went  down 
to  Natal  to  have  it  treated,  and  here  he  was  back  again,  wishing 
to  kill  a  few  more  elephants  before  returning  to  his  wife  and 


238 


THE  STORY  OF  MY  LIFE 


family  in  England.  But  he  would  be  delighted  to  take  service 
under  me  for  some  months,  at  any  rate. 

So  he  was  then  and  there  engaged.  As  in  most  other  cases  of 
selection  I  judged  him  from  his  voice,  face  and  manner,  rather 
than  from  credentials  difficult  to  verify  in  Central  Africa.  I  was, 
as  it  happened,  as  fortunate  in  him  as  a  colleague,  as  in  Nicoll, 
whom  I  had  met  in  Quelimane.  By  the  time  Sharpe  and  I  met 
again  at  Blantyre  I  had  made  him  a  Vice  Consul,  subject  to  For- 
eign Office  approval.  He  started  ahead  of  the  steamer  that  eve- 
ning with  his  crew  of  paddlers  and  reached  the  Shire  Highlands  a 
day  or  two  in  advance  of  my  expedition. 

We  were  again  delayed  on  the  river  by  an  anxious  interview 
with  Mlauri.  When  the  James  Stevenson  reached  the  neighbor- 
hood of  his  town  on  the  west  bank,  it  was  made  quite  clear  that 
she  had  to  stop  there  pending  Mlauri's  decision.  Not  only  had 
the  Portuguese  advance  filled  the  Makololo  chief  with  misgivings, 
but  he  had  two  or  three  unsettled  quarrels  with  the  Scottish  plan- 
ters and  missionaries  .  .  .  quarrels  arising  from  the  blame- 
worthy actions  of  boisterous  white  men  not  in  the  service  either 
of  the  Missions  or  of  the  Lakes  Company.  I  determined  to  go  on 
shore  and  see  Mlauri,  but  as  I  could  not  speak  Chi-nyanja,  and 
Mlauri  (I  was  told)  did  not  understand  Swahili,  I  looked  around 
for  an  interpreter.  The  Revd.  Alexander  Henderson,  a  promi- 
nent member  of  the  Church  of  Scotland  Mission  who  was  travel- 
ing up  to  Blantyre  in  the  steamer  and  whom  I  had  met  in  Edin- 
burgh the  preceding  spring  as  a  consultant  over  the  Portuguese 
proposals,  kindly  offered  to  interpret  for  me. 

We  landed  together,  pushed  our  way  with  as  little  force  as  was 
necessary  through  a  mob  of  gunmen  and  found  ourselves  in 
Mlauri's  presence.  That  chief  with  a  gaudy,  colored  blanket 
round  his  loins  and  a  tall  white  hat  on  his  head  seemed  to  me  an 
angry-looking  savage ;  but  he  had  two  rickety  chairs  brought  out 
of  his  house  and  placed  by  his  side.  We  tried  them  cautiously; 
they  collapsed  when  we  sat  on  them,  and  left  us  sprawling  on 
the  ground.  Shouts  of  derisive  laughter  followed,  but  not  from 
Mlauri  who  did  not  seem  to  have  intended  the  mishap.  Other 


THE  STORY  OF  MY  LIFE 


239 


seats  were  called  for  and  Mlauri  commanded  silence.  Mr.  Hen- 
derson translated  my  protests  and  advice,  advice  to  Mlauri  to 
svififer  the  Portuguese  advance  without  resistance,  on  my  assur- 
ance that  it  would  not  be  permitted  by  the  British  Government  to 
take  permanent  effect.  Mlauri  however  reiterated  his  intention 
of  fighting  the  Portuguese  if  they  advanced  north  of  the  Ruo- 
Shire  junction.  However  he  seemed  a  little  mollified  by  my 
assurances  that  we  would  not  recognize  his  country  as  coming 
under  Portuguese  rule;  and  the  return  journey  to  the  steamer 
was  almost  friendly  in  its  character. 

Arrived  at  Katunga  I  found  Mr.  John  Moir  awaiting  me.  He 
had  brought  down  with  him  for  my  conveyance  a  wild  mare — 
The  Nightmare,  I  subsequently  named  her,  after  several  years' 
experience — who  (supposing  me  to  be  an  equestrian)  might  con- 
vey me  speedily  over  the  twenty-eight  miles  of  rough  mountain 
road  leading  up  from  Katunga  to  Blantyre,  an  ascent  of  nearly 
three  thousand  feet.  This  mare  apparently  realized  that  there 
was  a  possibility  of  meeting  tsetse  fly  on  the  river  level  of  Ka- 
tunga, so  no  time  must  be  wasted  there.  I  was  no  sooner  on  her 
back  than  she  made  for  the  ascending  road  and  seemed  to  me  to 
gallop  the  whole  way  up  it  till  she  reached  the  outside  of  her 
stable  at  "Mandala,"  the  African  Lakes  Company's  suburb  of 
Blantyre.  I  managed  fortunately  to  remain  on  her  back,  but  the 
approach  to  Mandala  made  me  feel  deep  sympathy  for  Mazeppa. 
There  were  avenues  that  overarched,  pergolas  that  were  too  low, 
and  my  attitude  as  the  mare  flew  with  me  up  to  her  stable  door — 
and  not  to  the  front  of  the  mansion  where  a  deputation  was  wait- 
ing to  receive  me — was  crouched  and  clinging. 

I  surprised  Mrs.  Moir  very  much  by  walking  into  her  kitchen 
from  the  back  premises  and  explaining  who  I  was.  She  intro- 
duced me  to  the  deputation  in  front  and  I  gave  them  the  gratify- 
ing news  that  a  real  solution  of  the  status  of  Nyasaland  was 
approaching,  and  that  the  country  of  their  colonization — the 
Shire  Highlands — would  not  be  handed  over  to  the  Portuguese. 
As,  in  the  next  few  days,  I  rode  and  walked  about  Blantyre  and 
its  vicinity  I  realized  why  such  an  attachment  was  felt  for  it. 


240 


THE  STORY  OF  MY  LIFE 


The  climate  in  the  dry  season  was  perfectly  delightful  at  this  ele- 
vation of  nearly  four  thousand  feet — as  Livingstone  had  so  often 
felt.  The  scenery  was  alluring — trees,  mountains,  verdure,  cas- 
cades, flowers  at  all  seasons,  roses  in  the  gardens  blooming  all 
the  year  round;  streams  and  streamlets  of  running  water;  ave- 
nues of  cypresses  (introduced  from  South  Africa),  a  church  of 
striking  architecture  designed  and  built  by  the  Church  of  Scotland 
Mission.  A  ride  towards  Zomba  (where  the  Consulate  had  been 
built)  revealed  still  more  remarkable  mountain  scenery.  .  .  . 
It  was  a  country  which  roused  one  to  enthusiasm.  .  .  . 

From  Blantyre  I  despatched  Mr.  Sharpe  on  an  almost  impos- 
sible errand.  He  was  to  march  over  mountains,  across  tumultu- 
ous rivers,  through  strange  and  untested  tribes  till  he  reached 
Zumbo,  on  the  north  bank  of  the  central  Zambezi.  Then  cross- 
ing the  Luangwa  River  he  was  to  proceed  northward  making 
treaties  with  the  chiefs  outside  the  Portuguese  sphere,  and  to 
journey  thus  into  Katanga  and  return  by  Lake  Mweru  and  the 
Awemba  country.  He  secured  a  caravan  of  twenty  to  thirty 
Atonga  and  Anyanja  porters — and — went;  with  no  more  fuss 
and  parade  than  if  he  had  been  merely  starting  for  the  Lower 
Shire.   To  me,  when  he  had  gone,  it  seemed  a  desperate  errand. 

Nicoll  was  despatched  to  the  Upper  Shire  to  take  the  tiny 
African  Lakes  Company's  steamer,  and  voyage  to  Karonga  at 
the  north  end  of  Nyasaland,  and  there  intimate  to  the  Arab 
chiefs,  if  they  were  at  all  bespeakable,  that  I  was  coming  later  on 
to  consider  terms  of  peace. 

My  own  purpose  was  to  march  from  Blantyre  along  the  Upper 
Shire  making  treaties  where  possible;  and  on  Lake  Nyasa  to 
attract  the  attention  of  the  Universities'  Mission  steamer,  the 
Charles  Janson,  and  voyage  in  her  to  Likoma  Island  in  the  center 
of  the  lake  and  there  meet  Bishop  Smythies,  an  old  acquaintance 
at  Zanzibar  four  years  previously.  I  wished  to  tell  him  the  situ- 
ation and  as  far  as  might  be  possible  enlist  his  support  and  get 
his  information  relative  to  making  peace  with  the  Arabs.  I 
intended,  if  he  permitted,  next  crossing  the  lake  to  Bandawe  and 
foregathering  with  the  already  celebrated  Dr.  Laws,  who  had 


THE  STORY  OF  MY  LIFE 


241 


come  out  to  the  Zambezi  and  Shire  as  far  back  as  1875,  and 
eventually  had  settled  down  in  West  Nyasaland  to  establish  the 
Livingstonia  (Presbyterian)  Mission. 

This  visit  was  made,  and  in  it  I  learned  a  great  deal  I  never 
knew  before,  for  Robert  Laws  was  an  altogether  remarkable 
man,  in  those  days  with  black  hair  and  beard  and  a  fourteen 
years'  experience  of  Tropical  Africa.  Bandawe  was  an  exceed- 
ingly hot  place  on  the  shore  of  the  Atonga  district,  in  the  middle 
of  West  Nyasaland.  Behind — some  twenty-five  miles  distant — 
there  rose  the  escarpment  of  the  Mombera  plateau  where  the 
Angoni  Zulus  had  founded  a  chiefdom  and  where  their  headmen 
still  spoke  the  Gaza  Zulu  tongue.  The  Atonga  among  whom  Dr. 
Laws  was  working  were  a  comparatively  small  tribe  speaking  a 
Bantu  language  rather  different  to  Chinyanja,  and  related  to  the 
Henga  and  Tumbuka  tongues.  They  had  soon  become  accus- 
tomed to  seeking  work  among  the  Scottish  settlers  in  the  Shire 
Highlands  and  on  the  coast  of  Lake  Nyasa,  and  later  came  to 
play  an  important  part  as  soldiers  in  the  development  of  Nyasa- 
land. Yet,  but  for  the  intervention  of  men  like  Dr.  Laws  and 
the  British  Government  behind  him  they  might  have  been  wiped 
out  by  the  Angoni  Zulus.  These  Angoni  only  ruled  by  their  over- 
mastering influence,  for  their  "people"  were  pre-existing  tribes 
whom  they  had  come  to  dominate  and  govern. 

Afifairs  on  the  lake  were  so  pressing  that  I  could  only  spend 
two  or  three  days  drinking  in  wisdom  from  Dr.  Laws.  I  had 
resolved  as  part  of  my  scheme  to  seek  the  acquaintance  of  an 
important  Arab  in  Nyasaland  who  lived  as  a  ruling  chief  in  the 
lands  south  of  Bandawe  and  the  Atonga  country :  Tawakali  Sudi, 
the  "Jumbe"  or  Prince  of  Kotakota  (Ngotangota).  ("Jumbe" 
is  an  old  Swahili  word  meaning  "prince"  or  "viceroy."  It  has 
died  out  on  much  of  the  Zanzibar  coast  but  was  preserved  here  in 
Nyasaland,  and  for  half  a  century  had  been  given  to  the  Arab 
who  represented,  more  or  less,  the  authority  of  the  Sayyid — 
nowadays  the  Sultan — of  Zanzibar.  The  Jumbe  of  Kotakota  in 
Southwest  Nyasaland  had  done  so  for  some  thirty  years.  His 
memories  included  the  sight  of  Livingstone  in  1863  and  again  in 


242 


THE  STORY  OF  MY  LIFE 


1866 — "Bwana  Daudi"  he  always  called  him.  I  had  first  heard 
of  Jumbe  at  Zanzibar  from  the  Sayyid  or  Sultan,  and  had  been 
recommended  to  try  him  as  an  intermediator  in  solving  the  Arab 
question  at  the  north  end  of  the  Lake;  in  fact  the  Sultan  of  Zan- 
zibar had  given  me  a  letter  of  introduction.) 

So  the  Charles  Sanson  took  me  on  board  again  at  Bandawe 
and  landed  me  finally  on  the  Kotakota  coast  near  the  mouth  of 
the  Bua  River.  Her  captain,  Mr.  Belcher,  hesitated  to  deposit 
me  at  the  great  Arab  town  because  he  w^as  uncertain  as  to  whether 
Jumbe  was  not  an  ally  of  the  North  Nyasa  Arabs. 

From  my  rather  miserable  camp  in  the  wild  bush  near  the  Bua 
I  sent  on  Ali  Kiongwe  as  an  envoy  bearing  the  Zanzibar  Sultan's 
letter.  I  waited  anxiously  his  return.  Two  days  afterwards  he 
came  back  jubilant,  wearing  a  handsome  kannu  given  him  by 
Jumbe,  with  a  dozen  or  more  sturdy  porters  bringing  presents  of 
food,  and  placed  at  my  disposal  for  the  transport  of  my  own  lug- 
gage to  Jumbe's  town.  "Khabari  njema,  Bwana,  kabisa !  Tuli- 
pokewa  kizuri,  wallah !  Barua  ya  Sayyid  ilitusayidia  kwema,"  ^ 
said  Ali  Kiongwe  confidentially;  for  he  always  assumed  in  the 
hearing  of  Africans  at  this  time  that  I  was  so  great  a  personage, 
as  a  servant  of  the  Queen,  that  I  did  not  need  "help,"  though  I 
was  always  willing  to  receive  favors  and  acknowledge  them 
gracefully.  So  the  next  day  we  set  out,  crossed  the  Bua  in 
canoes,  and  walked  the  fifteen  miles  to  Jumbe's  town.  Here  my 
reception  was  dignified  and  friendly.  Scores  of  Arabs  and  many 
more  Arabized  Negroes  dressed  in  their  Zanzibar  clothes  received 
me  as  I  walked  up  to  where  Jumbe  was  standing.  He  had  a 
kindly  face,  though  I  could  see  at  once  he  was  a  half-caste,  not 
an  Arab  of  pure  blood.  He  was  not  loquacious — for  which  being 
then  very  tired  I  was  thankful,  for  although  I  had  become  fully 
cognizant  of  Swahili,  when  very  weary  physically  remembrance 
of  it  would  desert  me. 

Jumbe  indicated  a  large,  rambling  Arab  house  as  my  head- 
quarters, with  ample,  shady  verandas  and  considerable  privacy; 

1  "News  Rood,  master,  completely.  We  were  received  finely,  by  God ! 
Letter  of  the  Sayyid  helped  us  well." 


THE  STORY  OF  MY  LIFE 


243 


and  with  a  tact  and  intuition  of  which  I  never  found  him  failing 
suggested  that  I  should  spend  all  the  rest  of  the  day  in  repose  and 
quietude  and  defer  the  opening  of  my  business  till  the  morrow. 
I  was  thankful  for  this,  and  I  remember  with  what  relief  I  had 
my  bed  set  up  in  a  cool,  dark  room  of  the  house,  got  into  it  and 
went  to  sleep  for  the  afternoon. 

The  next  day  I  visited  Jumbe  with  some  ceremony  in  his  ram- 
shackle, untidy  house,  with  a  huge  swaying  veranda  of  coarse 
thatch  and  an  outlook  over  Lake  Nyasa.  Coco-nut  palms — rarely 
seen  so  far  from  the  sea-coast,  had  been  planted  in  front,  together 
with  clumps  of  papaws.  The  intensely  blue  waters  and  the  bril- 
Hant  green  vegetation  prevented  the  scene  from  being  squalid, 
though  the  general  untidiness  of  the  town  nearly  justified  that 
adjective.  After  the  usual  compliments  in  Zanzibar- Arabic 
broadly  pronounced,  we  proceeded  to  business.  I  gave  in  Swahili 
a  general  description  of  the  political  crisis  in  Africa — the  con- 
flicting interests  of  the  Germans,  Portuguese  and  British;  of  the 
Arabs,  and  of  the  Yao,  Nyanja,  Angoni-Zulus,  and  other  native 
tribes  of  Nyasaland.  It  was,  in  fact,  either  a  struggle,  or  a  peace 
and  a  compact  between  the  Black,  White  and  Yellow.  This  meta- 
phor so  seized  the  fancy  of  my  audience  that  I  illustrated  it  by 
three  strips  of  cloth,  placing  the  White  between  the  yellow  and 
the  black  and  forthwith  the  colors  of  British  Central  Africa  came 
into  being.  (Jumbe  and  his  associates  belonged  of  course  to  the 
Yellow  section  from  the  general  average  of  their  complexions.) 
If  Jumbe  came  to  terms  with  me  on  the  lines  of  my  proposed 
treaty,  he  would  arm  and  mobilize  a  sufficient  number  of  his 
fighting  men — say  four  hundred  whom  I  would  pick  out — and 
place  them  under  the  control  of  competent  leaders  who  would 
follow  me  to  the  north  end  of  the  lake  and  compel  the  Arabs  there 
to  make  peace;  if  they  refused,  Jumbe's  force  would  join  the 
native  levies  of  the  African  Lakes  Company  ("Mandala,"  as  it 
was  termed)  and  turn  the  Arabs  out  of  their  strongholds,  make 
war  on  them  unceasingly  till  they  were  driven  out  of  Nyasaland. 

Other  articles  defined  roughly  the  limits  of  Jumbe's  territory, 
and  abolished  within  it  for  ever  the  slave  trade.   The  Agreement 


244 


THE  STORY  OF  MY  LIFE 


also  provided  that  Jumbe  should  receive  a  subsidy  at  the  rate  of 
£200  a  year,  so  long  as  the  treaty  was  observed.  After  one  day's 
deliberation  with  his  headmen  Jumbe  assented  to  my  proposi- 
tions. The  Treaty  and  the  supplementary  agreement  were  signed 
by  both  parties  and  the  British  flag  was  solemnly  hoisted  at 
Kotakota. 

So  far,  good.  I  should  have  been  glad  if  at  this  juncture  the 
Ilala  had  been  sighted,  and  if  after  ceremonious  farewells  I  had 
been  able  to  take  my  leave  and  proceed  to  Karonga  to  rejoin  Mr. 
Nicoll. 

But  there  was  no  sign  or  rumor  of  the  little  steamer,  so  I 
stifled  anxiety  and  turned  my  attention  to  sketching  and  portrait- 
painting  which  excited  much  interest  among  the  natives.  I  con- 
tinued to  be  treated  by  Jumbe  with  unwearied  hospitality,  the 
more  noteworthy  since  owing  to  erratic  circumstances  I  had  very 
little  with  me  save  clothes  and  travel  necessaries  and  could  give 
him  no  present.  I  almost  used  up  his  stock  of  candles,  and  con- 
sumed all  his  supplies  of  tinned  fruits  which  had  come  overland 
from  Zanzibar.  The  only  thing  I  could  offer  him  in  return  for 
his  hospitality  was  a  bottle  of  yellow  Chartreuse.  He  was  a  very 
strict  Muhammadan,  especially  in  eschewing  alcohol,  but  he  suf- 
fered much  from  asthma.  He  appealed  to  me  repeatedly  for 
medicine,  and  as  I  had  no  drugs  with  me  I  was  in  despair,  until 
it  occurred  to  me  that  a  small  glass  of  Chartreuse  might  at  any 
rate  distract  his  thoughts  even  if  it  did  not  remedy  the  asthma. 
So  I  gave  him  a  taste  of  what  he  called  "the  golden  water."  He 
at  once  declared  himself  cured  and  the  least  I  could  do  was  to 
hand  him  the  entire  bottle.  He  made  it  last  him  for  months,  and 
it  was  the  one  thing — he  told  me  afterwards — that  he  felt  obliged 
to  deny  to  his  head  wife,  the  lady  Siena. 

Still  the  steamer  did  not  come ;  but  for  the  moment  a  more 
immediate  anxiety  arose.  Jumbe  proposed  sending  in  command 
of  his  whole  force  a  burly  man  whom  he  looked  on  as  a  great 
military  leader.  He  had  nothing  of  the  Arab  about  him  though 
he  dressed  as  one,  but  seemed  to  be  a  Negro  of  local  origin. 
This  man,  he  told  me,  was  dying  apparently  and  rather  suddenly 


THE  STORY  OF  MY  LIFE 


245 


of  a  mysterious  malady,  which,  when  I  saw  the  patient,  I  could 
only  define  as  Elephantiasis.  The  scrotum  was  enormously  en- 
larged so  that  it  hung  half  way  down  the  thighs  and  the  skin  of 
the  abdomen  and  groins  was  puffed  out  and  corrugated.  The 
man  could  no  longer  walk  and  was  getting  into  a  ghastly  condi- 
tion because  his  wives,  believing  he  was  going  to  die,  had  deserted 
him  lest  they  might  at  his  death  be  accused  of  having  caused  it. 
My  heart  sank  in  despair,  but  I  called  in  Ali  Kiongwe  to  counsel. 
We  obtained  a  native  lancet,  a  clumsily  sharpened  prod  of  iron, 
and  with  this  and  my  own  razor  I  made  a  small  incision  in  the 
small  gland  at  the  angle  of  the  right  groin.  A  clear  liquid  flowed 
out  and  in  the  course  of  twenty-four  hours  the  swelling  was 
enormously  reduced. 

But  the  little  incision  we  had  made  with  the  razor  widened  and 
widened  and  its  edges  sloughed  apart  and  were  so  insubstantial 
that  they  could  not  be  sewn  together.  Through  the  livid  opening 
I  could  see  into  the  man's  anatomy — bowels  and  bladder — to  a 
degree  that  I  thought  hardly  consistent  with  recovery.  But  he 
did  recover.  The  only  accessible  remedy  I  could  think  of  was 
paraffin — water  for  washing  was  in  that  neighborhood  full  of 
bad  germs.  Jumbe  fortunately  had  a  good  supply  of  paraffin  for 
his  lamps  and  we  anointed  the  wounds  with  linen  bandages 
steeped  in  paraffin.  For  a  week  I  had  to  make  chicken  broth 
twice  a  day  and  prepare  any  other  invalid  food  we  could  obtain 
in  the  raw  material,  because  the  man's  three  or  four  wives  would 
not  return  and  take  any  responsibility  off  my  shoulders.  But  at 
last  when  the  miraculous  cure — as  it  seemed — was  widely  re- 
ported they  strolled  in  to  my  compound  to  gaze  at  a  reviving 
husband ;  and  when  at  last  the  Charles  Janson  lay  at  anchor  be- 
fore Kotakota  and  Jumbe's  commander-in-chief  could  be  gingerly 
removed  to  his  own  dwelling,  his  wives  took  over  the  case  and 
promised  to  follow  my  directions  regarding  diet  and  remedies. 
Two  months  afterwards  I  heard  the  invalid  was  able  to  walk,  and 
he  certainly  lived  for  years  afterwards.  I  used  to  see  him  when 
I  revisited  Jumbe,  but  I  can  not  remember  any  signal  evidence  of 
gratitude  on  his  part. 


246 


THE  STORY  OF  MY  LIFE 


When  we  had  lived  for  three  weeks  at  Kotakota,  still  without 
news  of  the  Ilala,  I  asked  Jumbe's  advice.  He  suggested  we 
should  try  Arab  magic  to  ascertain  the  fate  of  the  steamer.  One 
of  his  diviners  was  called  in  and  brought  his  apparatus  of  sand 
— "rami."  He  juggled  with  this  for  a  half  hour  and  then  inter- 
preted and  gave  out  the  result.  "Your  'istima,'  "  he  said,  "was 
caught  by  a  storm  and  was  driven  on  to  a  sand  bank  near  Rifu" 
[the  narrowest  part  of  the  lake]  "and  there  lies  a  total  wreck." 

This  was  cheering  news!  And  it  was  almost  accurate.  The 
Ilala  had  met  with  this  fate  and  did  not  navigate  the  lake  for 
months  later.  After  reflection  I  again  sought  the  diviner  for  a 
further  prognostication  as  to  the  future.  He  promptly  responded. 
After  consulting  his  box  of  sand  he  informed  me  that  in  seven 
days  the  "Istima-ya-Askaf" — the  Bishop's  steamer  would  come 
to  my  relief. 

And  sure  enough,  at  the  end  of  the  fifth  week  of  my  stay,  the 
Charles  Janson  came  to  an  anchor  off  Kotakota  with  Archdeacon 
Maples  on  board. 

Maples  who  became  later  Bishop  in  succession  to  Smythies  was 
a  charming  man,  as  indeed  were  the  majority  of  the  Universities' 
Mission  men.  I  had  met  him  years  before  in  London  at  the  An- 
thropological Institute,  where  he  lectured  on  the  Makua  people 
and  their  language.  He  had  heard  of  the  Ilala's  breakdown  and 
had  come  instead  to  pick  me  up ;  otherwise  my  expedition  might 
have  languished  at  Jumbe's,  or  its  suspension  have  forced  me 
into  a  hazardous  march  of  three  hundred  miles  overland  with 
Jumbe's  erratic  forces;  which,  however,  though  deprived  of  their 
supposedly  efficient  commandant — the  invalid  mentioned — did 
actually  reach  Deep  Bay.  Here  they  received  a  message  through 
the  commandant — Lieutenant  Richard  Crawshay^ — to  say  I  had 

1  Lieutenant  Crawshay,  who  if  still  living  must  be  Colonel  Crawshay, 
began  soldiering  with  the  Royal  Inniskillen  regiment  in  Natal.  He  obtained 
leave  to  join  Lugard  in  the  defence  of  the  African  Lakes  Company  in  North 
Nyasaland.  He  joined  my  administration  in  1891,  became  a  Vice-Consul 
and  served  for  some  years  in  North  Nyasaland.  In  1899-1902,  he  rendered 
important  services  to  the  British  Government  in  the  Boer  War.  In  1907, 
he  explored  Tierra  del  Fuego  and  published  a  beautifully  illustrated  work 
on  its  birds.  He  made  many  noteworthy  discoveries  in  the  mammalian  fauna 
of  Central  Africa. 


THE  STORY  OF  MY  LIFE 


247 


made  peace  with  the  North  Nyasa  Arabs  and  they  therefore  were 
at  hberty  to  return  to  Kotakota. 

Mr.  Nicoll  who  had  preceded  me  at  Karonga  by  nearly  a  month 
had  done  wonders.  He  had  brought  about  a  truce  with  Mlozi, 
the  principal  Arab,  and  prepared  him  for  seeing  me  and  negotiat- 
ing a  peace.  So  that  this  was  made  within  a  week  of  my  arrival. 
I  then  voyaged  all  round  the  north  end  of  Lake  Nyasa — not  then 
occupied  by  the  Germans — delighting  my  eyes  in  its  superb  scen- 
ery— banana  groves,  waterfalls,  picturesque  and  tidy  villages, 
forests  of  botanical  interest,  containing  amongst  other  things  a 
variety  or  sub-species  of  oil  palm  which  resembled  that  discovered 
by  Sir  John  Kirk  in  the  interior  of  Zanzibar  Island;  and  high 
mountains,  superb  in  coloration  and  rich  in  vegetable  growth. 
This  wonderful  Livingstone  range  rose  in  the  north  to  an  altitude 
in  Mt.  Rungwe  of  about  ten  thousand  feet.  I  decided  to  secure 
the  harbor  of  Parumbira  for  the  African  Lakes  Company,  as 
offering  them  a  better  protection  than  Karonga  and  being  farther 
removed  from  the  Arab  towns.  My  efiforts  in  this  direction  were 
nullified  the  next  year  by  the  Treaty  with  Germany  which  fixed 
the  Songwe  River  as  the  boundary;  and  later  on  the  Germans, 
equally  struck  with  the  advantages  of  Parumbira,  made  it  their 
headquarters  on  the  lake. 

On  my  way  back  to  Karonga  I  landed  in  the  Songwe  Delta  or 
the  "marshes  of  the  Songwe"  as  they  were  called  in  the  wet 
season.  I  traversed  them  on  foot  with  Mr.  Kidd,  the  sub-agent 
of  the  Lakes  Company,  and  remember  them  for  two  reasons : 
firstly  the  enormous  herd  of  buffalo  we  found  browsing  on  the 
vegetation;  and  secondly,  the  crocodiles.  The  buffalo  were  in 
such  numbers  and  so  unaccustomed  to  assault  that  they  hardly 
moved  out  of  our  way,  and  it  seemed  almost  an  act  of  treachery 
to  fire  at  them.  And  even  more  striking  than  the  buffalo  were 
the  horrible  crocodiles  which  lay  in  every  crack  of  mud  and  rill  of 
water,  lashing  with  their  tails,  snapping  with  their  immense  jaws, 
and  evincing  a  nightmare  eagerness  to  consume  the  humans  who 
nervously  tripped  across  the  labyrinth  of  dried-mud,  reed-beds 
and  water  channels. 


248 


THE  STORY  OF  MY  LIFE 


Mr.  Nicoll  having  negotiated  for  weeks  had  prepared  the 
Arabs  for  my  terms.  I  arranged  to  meet  them  in  the  bush,  six 
miles  beyond  Karonga,  stipulating  that  they  should  only  bring  a 
small  escort  and  I  would  do  the  same.  I  was  accompanied  by  Mr. 
Nicoll,  Mr.  Monteith  Fotheringham,  AH  Kiongwe,  a  Makua  serv- 
ant and  twenty  armed  Atonga.  Mlozi  and  about  eight  of  the 
leading  Arabs  represented  the  other  side.  I  read  out  in  Swahili 
the  terms  of  the  treaty  and  after  a  brief  discussion  it  was  ac- 
cepted, signed,  and  peace  was  declared.  The  Arabs  had  brought 
a  fine  bull  which  was  forthwith  killed  as  a  sacrifice  and  its  flesh 
divided  up  between  both  sides.  I  ate  a  little  of  it  as  beef  at  my 
evening  meal.  The  Arabs  came  next  day  to  an  entertainment 
and  feast  at  Karonga,  where  the  British  flag  was  hoisted  and 
saluted  with  great  ceremony.  Mr.  Crawshay  next  arrived  from 
Deep  Bay  with  a  large  number  of  Wahenga,  whose  three  or  four 
chiefs  signed  further  treaties.  Then  I  set  ofif  on  my  important 
journey  to  Tanganyika. 

Influenced  by  Dr.  Kerr  Cross  I  made  my  route  thither  with 
rather  a  divergence  to  the  east.  We  climbed  the  Nyasa-Tangan- 
yika  plateau,  passed  through  the  enchantingly  lovely  country  of 
Bundale  with  the  climate  of  an  English  June,  rounded  the  shoul- 
ders of  mighty  Mt.  Rungwe  with  frost  at  night,  and  then  de- 
scended into  a  land  that  seemed  to  lie  under  a  curse. 

This  was  the  valley  or  depression  of  the  long  Lake  Rukwa, 
which  Dr.  Kerr  Cross  and  I  found  extended  much  farther  to  the 
southeast  than  was  suspected.  Only  its  western  portion  hitherto 
had  been  discovered  by  Joseph  Thomson.  We  scrambled  down 
from  the  edge  of  the  plateau  through  mountain  gorges  by  a  wind- 
ing, constricted  path,  set  on  either  side  with  clumps  of  spotted 
aloes  with  blood-red  flowers  on  blood-red  stalks  and  sharp- 
pointed,  fleshy  leaves.  Then  we  beheld  a  vast  plain  stretching 
north  and  west,  with  the  lake  filling  a  portion  of  it  and  branching 
into  gulfs  between  hill  ranges.  On  the  west  side  of  the  lake  its 
waters  had  shrunk,  and  flats  of  sickly  green  took  the  place  of 
water  reflecting  the  sky.  When  we  reached  this  area  of  sickly 
green  the  qualifying  adjective  remained  true:  the  water  was  salt 


THE  STORY  OF  MY  LIFE 


249 


or  brackish,  and  this  gave  the  reeds  their  look  of  sickHness.  We 
camped  on  the  old  lake  bed  under  the  shade  of  acacias. 

After  an  interval  suspicious,  naked  Negroes  approached,  and 
through  them  we  got  into  touch  with  the  chiefs  of  a  town  lying 
far  away  to  the  east,  at  the  water's  edge.  I  was  at  once  struck 
with  the  different  physique  and  facial  features  of  these  chiefs, 
whom  in  later  years  we  should  have  decided  were  of  "Hima" 
race.  Their  language,  which  I  eagerly  took  down,  showed  signs 
of  distant  affinity  with  the  Hima  tongues  of  the  Victoria  Nyanza. 
But  in  spite  of  intelligent,  handsome  faces  these  men  inspired  me 
with  distrust,  and  Ali  Kiongwe,  an  unrivalled  "intelligence"  offi- 
cer, was  constantly  warning  me  of  treachery  afoot.  On  the  third 
night  of  our  stay  near  the  lake  border  I  planned  a  withdrawal. 
As  soon  as  the  full  moon  rose,  we  silently  withdrew  from  our 
encampment.  The  Uwungu  town  was  about  five  miles  away  to 
the  east,  and  I  had  already  realized,  after  seven  years'  travel  in 
Africa,  how  disinclined  to  adventure,  after  the  sun  has  set,  is  even 
a  ruthless  African  bandit.  So,  with  the  glorious  light  of  a  full 
moon,  and  preserving  a  remarkable  degree  of  silence  we  stole 
westward  through  the  shadowy  acacia  trees,  over  white  sand  and 
hard,  dry  mud  to  the  rocks  which  marked  the  ascent  to  the  five 
thousand  feet  high  N3^asa-Tanganyika  Plateau.  We  scrambled  up 
the  precipitous  gorges  set  with  aloes,  we  disturbed  flocks  of  chat- 
tering baboons,  but  we  scarcely  halted  for  more  than  a  few  min- 
utes till  we  could  turn  round  on  the  edge  of  the  plateau  and  face 
the  sunrise  over  the  sinister  eastern  plains. 

After  this  we  accomplished  wonderful  marches  of  thirty, 
thirty-five  miles  a  day.  I  had  received  in  one  of  the  Arab  towns 
as  a  present,  a  peace  offering,  a  wonderful  specimen  of  the  Nyam- 
wezi  breed  of  asses.  She  was  a  female  and  her  name — which 
she  recognized  when  called  out  to  her — was  Hidaya.  She  had  a 
smooth  shining  coat  of  gray  with  a  broad  black  stripe  on  each 
shoulder.  Until  NicoU  was  also  mounted  I  did  not  like  to  be  the 
only  white  man  that  rode,  but  fortunately  when  we  had  got  back 
again  to  the  plateau  at  some  camping  place  near  the  settlement 
subsequently  called  "Fife,"  we  met  a  Nyamwezi  caravan  going 


250 


THE  STORY  OF  MY  LIFE 


west  for  trading  purposes.  This  in  itself  was  an  interesting  occa- 
sion, for  I  had  heard  much  about  these  Nyamwezi  people,  their 
intelligence,  and  the  part  they  had  been  playing  in  opening  up 
Savage  Africa.^  I  seized  the  opportunity  for  the  writing  down 
of  two  or  more  Nyamwezi  dialects  or  languages.  I  also  noticed 
several  spare  asses  trotting  along  in  addition  to  those  that  were 
being  ridden  by  the  men.  One  of  these  I  bought  for  three  pounds' 
worth  of  cloth  and  presented  to  NicoU.  We  were  now  both 
mounted  and  both  on  vigorous  asses  the  size  of  well-grown 
mules;  so  that  we  could  ride  ahead  of  the  caravan,  or  back  to 
pick  up  straggling  porters  or  out  to  shoot  or  sketch  or  photo- 
graph. What  a  relief,  when  one  was  so  weary  of  trudging  as  to 
be  unwilling  to  go  even  a  short  distance  ofif  the  beaten  track  to 
look  at  a  strange  tree  or  investigate  the  spoor  of  game !  It  was 
thanks  to  the  two  asses  that — our  loads  being  light — we  pro- 
ceeded across  this  uplifted  plateau  at  the  rate  of  thirty  miles  a 
day.  All  the  tribes  seemed  friendly  and  there  was  much  writing 
down  of  languages. 

Yet  outside  the  larger  villages  there  was  grim  evidence  of 
deeds  of  bloodshed.  The  path  to  the  main  gate  of  the  chief's 
stockaded  village  would  have  on  either  side  a  row  of  tall  stakes 
surmounted  by  the  rotting  heads  of  enemies  or  criminals.  Below 
the  skulls  was  sometimes  the  simulacrum  of  a  body  made  of 
straw,  tied  to  the  stake.  Some  of  the  skulls  had  lost  all  the  flesh 
of  the  face  but  still  preserved  the  head-hair;  others  were  abso- 
lutely bare,  with  hollow  eye-spaces  and  gleaming  teeth.  A  few 
appeared  to  be  comparatively  fresh  with  recognizable  features, 
but  smelling  very  badly  in  the  wind. 

Some  plausible  and  pleasant  explanation  was  vouchsafed  on 
enquiry.  At  any  rate  the  conduct  of  these  tribes  was  irreproach- 
able towards  us ;  and  when,  more  than  half  way  towards  Tangan- 

1  The  name  Nya-mwezi  means  "of"  or  "concerning  the  moon"  and  may- 
be related  to  the  name  which  traditionally  hung  about  Ruwenzori,  the 
"Mountain  of  the  Moon"  from  the  moon-like  aspect  of  its  snowy  heights. 
The  name  Nyamwezi  (Mwezi  means  "the  moon"  in  many  Bantu  languages) 
was  first  recorded  by  the  Portuguese  of  these  people  in  the  early  eighteenth 
century. 


THE  STORY  OF  MY  LIFE 


251 


yika,  we  got  into  the  Mambwe  country  our  reception  was  in- 
tensely friendly.  Our  porters  had  an  easy  time,  for  the  villagers 
would  rush  out,  carry  their  loads  to  the  next  village,  and  rouse 
up  further  carriers  there  so  that  we  were  conveyed  in  the  most 
friendly  fashion  to  within  sight  of  Tanganyika,  whose  gleaming 
waters  we  saw  superbly  set  forth  beyond  a  foreground  of  sump- 
tuous forest. 

There  was  little  woodland  on  the  plateau,  which  gave  one  the 
misleading  impression — the  anticipation  perhaps  of  a  hundred 
years  hence — of  being  planted  with  immense  fields  of  waving 
corn,  the  wild  grasses  which  grew  in  such  luxuriance  resembling 
wheat  somewhat  in  their  growth  and  aspect.  These  "cornfields" 
sheltered  a  great  variety  of  ground  orchids,  al^out  the  same  height 
as  the  grass,  with  superb  flowers — sulphur  yellow,  purple,  orange, 
and  white.  Reedbuck  antelopes  browsed  in  these  meadows  and 
merely  looked  up  at  us  with  astonishment  and  impatience  as  we 
passed.  The  caravan  was  in  no  need  of  food  so  I  hesitated  to 
break  the  friendly  silence  with  a  shot  lest  it  should  arouse  sus- 
picions of  our  intentions  among  the  human  population. 

At  one  point  on  our  road  across  the  plateau  we  came  rather 
near  its  abrupt  edge,  and  looked  down  over  the  course  of  the 
River  Saisi.  About  three  thousand  feet  below  we  could  see  enor- 
mous herds  of  game,  amongst  them — we  thought — giraflfe.  It 
is  a  curious  thing  in  the  distribution  of  the  larger  fauna  of  Africa 
to  note  what  a  distinct  break  occurs  at  the  abrupt  rise  from 
"German"  East  Africa  to  the  heights  of  the  Nyasa-Tanganyika 
Plateau.  In  East  Africa  is  still  found  the  giraffe  which  extends 
its  range  to  Ubena,  the  Rufiji  River,  and  the  eastern  flanks  of  this 
elevated  highland,  but  does  not — apparently — surmount  it.  It  is 
wholly  absent  from  British  Central  Africa,  except  to  the  west  of 
the  main  Zambezi. 

As  we  got  to  the  northern  edge  of  the  plateau  and  could  look 
down  on  the  distant  expanse  of  Tanganyika,  I  pitched  on  one 
spot — my  camp  for  a  day  or  so — which  seemed  singularly  well 
suited  for  a  future  town,  possibly  the  chief  station  of  the  Tan- 
ganyika district.    I  made  a  treaty  with  the  Ulungu  chief  and 


252 


THE  STORY  OF  MY  LIFE 


purchased  the  site,  on  the  edge  of  a  beautiful  forest  through 
which  the  road  descended  to  the  lake  level.  I  called  the  future 
town  "Abercorn,"  after  the  Chairman  of  the  British  South 
Africa  Company.  Whether  it  still  remains  a  town  after  the  rav- 
ages of  the  Sleeping  Sickness — which  did  much  to  depopulate 
south  Tanganyika — I  can  not  say.  Whilst  halting  here  I  sent  on 
messengers  to  the  London  Missionary  Society's  station  at  Niam- 
kolo  on  the  shore  of  the  lake,  to  prepare  the  missionaries  for  our 
coming,  which  otherwise  might  be  a  disagreeable  shock  or  too 
sudden  a  relief.  Captain  Swann — the  commander  of  their  little 
steamer,  the  Good  News — met  us  in  the  forest  on  the  road  down 
from  Abercorn.  He  became  better  known  in  after  years  as  A.  J. 
Swann,  than  by  his  title  in  the  Mercantile  Marine.  In  those  days 
he  was  still  a  young  man,  lithe  and  good-looking,  and  already 
the  father  of  a  small  family  by  the  shores  of  Tanganyika,  where 
his  plucky  wife  had  lived  with  him  for  some  five  years.  At 
Niamkolo  there  were  five  other  missionaries.  The  head  of  the 
mission  was  the  Revd.  David  Jones  who  had  for  several  years 
made  good  and  discerning  studies  of  the  Bantu  languages  of  Tan- 
ganyika from  Mambwe  on  the  southeast  to  Guha  on  the  west. 
If  I  had  looked  for  any  reward  for  pushing  through  to  Tangan- 
yika with  a  year's  arrested  supplies  for  this  Mission,  I  got  it  in  the 
wealth  of  language  material  Mr.  Jones  put  at  my  disposal.  This 
I  long  afterwards  utilized  in  my  Comparative  Study  of  the  Bantu 
and  Semi-Bantu. 

After  a  few  days  spent  in  treaty-making  with  the  Mambwe 
and  Lungu  chiefs,  and  in  doing  what  I  could  to  set  right  the 
afifairs  of  the  London  Missionary  Society — they  had  been  well, 
rather  than  ill  treated  by  the  Arabs,  but  there  were  certain  entan- 
glements with  native  affairs  not  of  their  seeking — I  accepted  very 
readily  the  offer  of  Mr.  Swann  to  serve  as  guide  and  interpreter 
with  the  natives  and  went  off  in  his  large  sailing  boat  since  the 
Good  News  was  laid  up.  We  visited  first  the  southeast  corner 
of  the  lake  where  the  shore  scenery  was  superb  with  precipitous 
mountains  and  unprecedented  waterfalls;  then  we  turned  about 
and  steered  for  the  coast  of  Itawa,  the  land  at  the  southwest  angle 


THE  STORY  OF  MY  LIFE 


253 


of  Tanganyika.  We  crossed  the  bar  of  a  broad  river  mouth  and 
entered  what  seemed  to  be  a  peaceful  lagoon,  though  farther  up 
it  narrowed  to  a  tumultuous  river,  plunging  down  from  the  hills. 
On  the  east  side  of  this  broad  estuary  was  the  station  of  Kabunda, 
a  far-famed  Arab  trader  who  had  been  for  years  a  consistent 
friend  of  the  English  missionaries.  Though  popularly  known  as 
an  Arab  he  was  really  of  Baluch  race  and  a  British  subject. 
"Kabunda"  was  his  Tanganyika  nick-name;  I  have  forgotten — 
if  I  ever  knew — his  designation  at  home  in  Asia.  He  was  a  tall, 
portly,  good-looking  man  with  rather  a  white  skin,  and  his  wife 
— he  claimed — was  also  a  Baluch  or  at  any  rate  came  from  Asia. 
She  was  quite  a  civilized  person,  and  was  not  at  any  rate  veiled 
in  our  presence.  As  she  could  talk  Swahili  I  was  able  to  converse 
with  her.  She  prided  herself  on  her  cooking  and  housekeeping 
generally.  I  certainly  had  a  very  comfortable  bedroom,  and 
though  the  food  provided  was  rather  rich  it  was  palatable  and 
"Indian"  in  flavor.  Her  curries  were  so  good  that  I  felt  my 
appetite  should  be  apologized  for;  during  my  week's  stay  with 
Kabunda  I  had  a  degree  of  comfort  rare  then  in  the  very  heart  of 
Tropical  Africa. 

I  had  come  so  far  and  done  so  much  that  I  thought  I  deserved 
a  week's  rest ;  so  whilst  Swann  sailed  about  on  the  lake  along  the 
broken  coast  of  Itawa,  arranging  for  the  negotiation  of  treaties, 
I  sat  and  sketched  in  the  day-time  on  the  shores  of  the  estuary 
near  Kabunda's  village.  Gazing  westward  one  had  before  the 
eyes  a  remarkable  conjunction  of  mountain,  river,  marsh,  estu- 
ary, sandspit  and  open  lake  scenery;  and  in  the  immediate  fore- 
ground on  the  water  and  the  clean  sand  such  a  variety  and  con- 
geries of  bird  life  as  was  rare  even  in  Tropical  Africa.  Some 
cause  or  seasonal  movement  had  brought  the  fish  down  from  the 
upper  reaches  of  the  stream  or  up  into  the  calm  waters  from  the 
lake. 

The  estuary  of  this  Lofu  River  was  of  unruffled  smoothness. 
Most  waterbirds  detest  the  rough,  sea-like  waters  of  great  lakes 
or  the  ribbed  current  of  a  rapid  stream.  If  one  turned  one's  gaze 
towards  the  open  lake  one  only  saw  small  gray  gulls  with  black 


254 


THE  STORY  OF  MY  LIFE 


barred  faces  and  black-tipped  wings,  and  large  scissor-billed  terns 
with  crimson  beaks  flying  with  seeming  aimlessness  over  the 
troubled  waters.  But  in  the  estuary  what  an  assemblage  of  bird 
forms !  There  were  pelicans  of  gray,  white  and  salmon  pink, 
with  yellow  pouches,  riding  the  water  like  swans,  replete  with  fish 
and  idly  floating.  Egyptian  geese — fawn-colored,  white,  and 
green-bronze;  spur-winged  geese,  bronze-green,  red-faced,  white- 
shouldered,  white-flecked;  African  teal  colored  much  like  those 
found  in  England;  a  small  jet-black  pochard  with  a  black  crest 
and  yellow  eyes ;  whistling  tree-duck  either  chestnut  and  white  or 
black  and  white,  zebra-barred;  huge  Sarcidiornis  ducks  with 
knobbed  beaks  and  spurred  wings,  and  a  beautiful  plumage  of 
white  and  bronzed-blue,  with  a  green-blue  speculum  in  the  sec- 
ondaries of  the  wings.  All  these  ducks  and  geese  hung  about  the 
fringe  of  the  reeds  and  the  papyrus.  The  ducks  would  be  diving 
for  fish,  but  the  geese  were  more  inclined  to  browse  off  the  water- 
weed.  Every  now  and  then  a  disturbance  would  occur ;  I  might 
cough  and  they  would  be  recalled  to  my  presence;  or  one  of 
Kabunda's  children  would  come  down  to  the  bank  and  tell  me  a 
meal  was  ready.  Then  the  ducks  would  scutter  over  the  surface 
or  the  geese  rise  with  a  clamor  for  a  circling  flight. 

Farthest  away  of  all  the  bird-assemblages  would  be  a  long  file 
of  rosy  flamingoes  sifting  the  water  for  small  fish  and  molluscs. 
They  were  so  far  off  that  their  movements  were  scarcely  per- 
ceptible; against  the  green  background  of  the  marsh  they  looked 
like  a  vast  fringe  of  pale,  pink  flowers  in  full  bloom. 

Small  bronze-green  cormorants  were  plunging  into  the  water 
for  fish,  diving  and  swimming  under  water  and  flying  away. 
Fish-catching  on  a  more  modest  scale,  quite  close  to  where  I 
might  be  seated  sketching,  would  be  carried  on  by  black-and-white 
Ceryle  kingfishers,  who  with  their  bodies  nearly  erect  and  the 
head  and  beak  directed  downwards  poised  themselves  in  the  air 
with  rapidly-fluttering  wings  and  then  darted  unerringly,  head 
foremost,  on  some  tiny  fish  under  the  surface  of  the  water. 

On  the  sandspit  two  dainty  crowned  cranes  were  pacing  the 
sand  and  the  scattered,  wiry  grass  looking  for  locusts.  Their 


THE  STORY  OF  MY  LIFE 


255 


coloration  of  golden  aigrettes,  black  velvet  topknots,  white 
cheeks,  crimson  wattles,  blue-gray  necks  and  backs,  snowy  white 
wings  fringed  with  gold,  chocolate  pinions,  and  black-gray  tails 
was  most  striking  and  seemed  even  to  be  consciously  displayed 
to  my  eyes,  for  these  birds  are  very  tame  throughout  Central 
Africa. 

The  quacking  of  the  ducks,  the  loud  cries  of  the  geese,  and  the 
compounded  sound  of  splashings  and  divings  and  scuttering 
flights  across  the  water  were  dominated  from  time  to  time  by  the 
ear-piercing  screams  of  a  fish-eagle,  perched  on  one  of  the  taller 
poles  of  a  fishing  weir.  The  bird  was  as  full  of  fish  as  he  could 
hold,  but  yet  seemed  annoyed  at  the  guzzling  going  on  around 
him,  and  therefore  relieved  his  feelings  at  ofif  moments  by  pierc- 
ing yells.  He  was  a  handsome  bird ;  head,  neck,  and  breast  snow- 
white,  the  rest  of  the  plumage  chocolate  brown. 

Add  to  the  foregoing  enumeration  of  birds,  stilt-plovers  of 
black  and  white  with  exceedingly  long,  slate-gray  legs;  spur- 
winged  plovers  with  yellow  wattles ;  curlew ;  sandpipers ;  crimson- 
beaked  pratincoles;  sacred  ibis,  pure  white  with  indigo-purple 
plumes;  hagedash  ibis,  iridescent-blue,  green,  and  red-bronze; 
verditer-blue,  red-beaked  gallinules ;  black  water-rails  with  lemon 
beaks  and  white  pencilings;  black  coots;  other  rails  that  were 
blue  and  green  with  turned-up  white  tails ;  squacco  herons,  white 
and  fawn-colored;  large  gray  herons;  purple-slate-colored 
herons ;  bluish-gray  egrets ;  small  white  egrets,  with  yellow  beaks, 
or  large,  with  feathery  plumes ;  Goliath  herons — nut-brown, 
black-streaked,  yellow  and  pinkish-gray;  small  black  storks  with 
open  and  serrated  beaks ;  monstrous,  bare-headed  marabu  storks ; 
and  dainty  lily-trotters,  black  and  white,  golden  yellow,  and 
chocolate  brown :  and  you  would  still  only  have  got  through  half 
the  enumeration  of  this  extraordinary  congregation  of  water- 
birds  on  the  estuary  of  the  River  Lofu,  a  few  minutes'  walk  from 
Kabunda's  home  .  .  .  now,  I  should  imagine,  to  be  seen  no 
more :  shot  out  by  European  invaders. 

However  the  week's  rest  came  to  an  end,  my  drawings  had  to 
be  put  away,  and  I  had  to  give  up  the  fascinating  task  of  writing 


256 


THE  STORY  OF  MY  LIFE 


down  new  Bantu  languages.  Not  only  was  I  desirous  of  making 
one  more  treaty  to  include  all  Cameron  Bay  within  the  British 
sphere,  but  I  still  longed  to  broach  to  bold  and  capable  Mr.  Swann 
the  grand  idea  of  embarking  in  his  repaired  steamer  and  going 
the  full  length  of  Tanganyika,  there  to  secure  by  treaty  the  north 
end  of  the  lake  ("The  Cape  to  Cairo")  :  when  a  mail  arrived 
from  Nyasaland.  By  this  I  learned,  in  an  exaggerated  form,  of 
the  northward  march  of  Lieutenant  Coutinho  and  the  seeming 
conquest  by  the  Portuguese  of  the  Shire  Highlands.  Public 
opinion  in  Europe — judging  from  the  newspapers — seemed  blow- 
ing up  into  an  angry  gale.  It  was  necessary  for  me  to  get  back  to 
the  Shire  Highlands  and  still  more  to  a  telegraph  station  on  the 
coast.  I  broached  my  schemes  to  Swann  of  securing  by  treaty 
the  north  end  of  Tanganyika  as  well  as  the  south,  obtained  his 
promise  of  co-operation,  agreed  when  the  Portuguese  trouble  was 
over  to  send  him  men  and  supplies  and  the  needful  authority,  and 
then — reluctantly — set  my  face  southward.  The  Tanganyika  of 
those  days  was  a  Paradise;  later  it  was  to  be  ravaged  by  wars, 
depopulated  by  Sleeping  Sickness,  and  afflicted  in  many  other 
ways. 

Had  the  Good  News  not  crumpled  up  in  some  forgotten  disas- 
ter of  navigation  just  before  I  came,  I  should  now  certainly  have 
adventured  in  her  as  far  as  the  north  end  of  Tanganyika  to  com- 
plete the  continuity  of  the  Cape  to  Cairo  project.  But  I  was  in- 
formed that  the  Portuguese  had  entered  and  occupied  the  Shire 
Highlands  and  established  themselves  at  the  south  end  of  Lake 
Nyasa,  and  that  as  a  result  war  between  Great  Britain  and  Portu- 
gal was  imminent.  Afraid  therefore  of  being  cut  ofif  from  the 
coast  I  resolved  to  hurry  back.  We  had  signed  a  treaty  with 
Itawa  which  carried  the  British  frontier  round  Cameron  Bay  to 
Cape  Akalunga :  that  fully  secured  to  us  access  to  the  south  end 
of  the  lake. 

My  return  to  Lake  Nyasa  was  accomplished  at  an  extraordi- 
nary speed — as  I  thought  it.  I  made  the  transit  in  something  like 
nine  days,  with  porters  relieved  of  half  their  loads  and  returning 
home.  Fortunately  there  was  a  steamer  waiting  at  Karonga; 
another  five  days  brought  us  to  the  south  end  of  Lake  Nyasa. 


THE  STORY  OF  MY  LIFE 


257 


Here  I  found  tranquillity  and  friendliness  where  I  had  ex- 
pected the  reverse.  Mponda  had  ceased  to  be  a  suspicious  foe 
and  was  ready  to  be  friends.  He  signed  a  treaty  and  professed 
to  know  nothing  of  the  Portuguese,  except  an  occasional  wan- 
dering Catholic  missionary.  Nicoll  and  I  rode  our  donkeys  along 
the  Shire,  and  a  very  few  days  brought  us  to  Blantyre — and  still 
no  Portuguese.  Another  day  and  we  were  at  Katunga,  having 
left  behind  our  donkeys  at  Blantyre  with  great  regret,  against 
our  probable  return.  Only  when  the  James  Stevenson  anchored 
off  Chiromo  at  the  end  of  the  British  Sphere  did  I  encounter  our 
Portuguese  rivals.  Then  I  had  a  visit  from  Lieutenant  Coutinho, 
who  brought  with  him  an  accumulation  of  my  mail  bags  and  told 
me  there  was  no  war  between  our  two  countries ;  that  the  matter 
of  frontiers  was  under  discussion. 

So  I  reached  Mozambique  under  pleasant  circumstances,  and 
there  had  a  good  rest  for  a  month.  Then  I  went  northward  in  a 
gunboat — it  was  early  in  1890 — to  Zanzibar,  and  arranged  with 
Euan-Smith  for  the  departure  of  Ali  Kiongwe  for  Tanganyika, 
with  letters  and  authority  for  Mr.  Swann.  Kiongwe  performed 
the  journey  with  marvelous  rapidity,  thanks  to  Arab  friends. 
The  Good  News  had  been  repaired  and  Mr.  Swann  made  a  quick 
trip  to  Burundi,  but  the  treaties  concluded  with  the  Barundi 
chiefs  did  not  reach  Sir  Percy  Anderson  at  Berlin  in  time  to 
secure  for  us  the  continuous  interior  route  to  Uganda.  Even  if 
they  had  arrived  before  the  signing  of  the  1890  Agreement,  it  is 
doubtful  whether  the  German  Emperor  would  have  admitted 
them  to  discussion.  It  had  become  an  idee  fixe  with  him  to  break 
the  chain  in  Central  Africa  of  continuous  British  influence. 

He  tried  to  do  so  over  the  Nyasa-Tanganyika  Plateau.  When 
in  1889  I  was  pushing  on  through  Nyasaland,  orders  of  a  not 
very  strenuous  kind  were  being  telegraphed  out  to  me  not  to  pro- 
ceed northward  beyond  the  12th  degree  of  S.  latitude,  because  my 
doing  so  was  objected  to  by  Prince  Bismarck.  These  cabled 
instructions  did  not  reach  me  till  I  had  returned  from  Tanganyika 
to  Blantyre.  Why  such  orders  were  sent  out  I  do  not  know,  con- 
sidering the  firmness  with  which  Sir  Percy  Anderson  stuck  to  my 
Nyasa-Tanganyika  treaties. 


258 


THE  STORY  OF  MY  LIFE 


One  feels  at  this  distance  of  time  that  to  readers  of  a  new 
generation  this  treaty-making  in  Africa  must  seem  a  farce. 
Great  European  States  would  meet  at  conferences  to  partition 
Africa,  Asia,  Papuasia,  Melanesia  into  spheres  of  influence  be- 
tween themselves  :  why  should  we  have  bothered  to  negotiate  with 
Negroes,  Arabs,  Afghans,  Siamese,  Malays,  or  Papuans? 

I  can  not  estimate  the  importance  of  the  set  of  native  opinion 
in  Asia,  though  I  should  have  thought  it,  except  in  the  case  of 
Papua,  even  more  important  as  a  factor  than  in  Africa.  But  in 
Central  or  West  Africa,  though  the  natives  might  not  be  able  to 
read  and  write,  they  had  a  very  clear  idea  what  resulted  from 
making  a  treaty.  They  memorized  the  terms  though  they  could 
not  read.  If  one  proceeded  to  interfere  in  the  conditions  of  a 
tribe  without  the  treaty  right  to  do  so,  there  was  sure  to  be  a  fight. 
On  the  other  hand  the  fidelity  with  which  any  large  native  com- 
munity abode  by  the  conditions  of  an  agreement,  even  when  it 
meant  in  the  vicissitudes  of  the  time  temporary  defeat  and  expul- 
sion from  the  home-land,  touched  me  to  the  quick.  I  am  sure  we 
were  right,  preparatory  to  detailed  and  definite  rule,  to  consult 
with  the  different  native  tribes  and  rulers  as  to  whether  they 
wished  us  to  preside  over  their  afifairs  in  northern  Zambezia  and 
Nyasaland.  For  several  years  in  some  cases,  where  a  ruling  chief 
or  a  tribe  declined  to  make  a  treaty  we  abstained  from  interven- 
tion in  their  domestic  concerns,  only  enjoining  on  them  that  they 
must  not  transgress  on  the  rights  of  neighboring  states  who  had 
entered  into  treaty  relations  with  the  British  Empire. 

Whilst  I  was  at  Mozambique  in  the  spring  of  1890  news  came 
from  Mr.  Sharpe  relating  the  surprising  results  of  his  expedition 
which  had  started  from  Blantyre  in  the  summer  of  the  preceding 
year.  He  had  made  treaties  as  far  west  as  the  Kafue  River,  as 
far  east  as  the  Luangwa,  as  far  north  as  Lake  Mweru.  He  had 
entered  Katanga,  in  the  southern  basin  of  the  Congo,  and  had  had 
interviews  with  its  Nyamwezi  conqueror,  Msiri  (locally  known 
as  Mushidi).  Msiri  however  had  firmly  declined  any  British  flag 
or  Protectorate  treaty,  asserting  that  he  would  similarly  reject 
proposal?  —if  they  ever  came  along — from  the  Belgians, 


THE  STORY  OF  MY  LIFE 


259 


Joseph  Thomson  was  apparently  attending  to  the  Bangweulu 
district,  so  the  only  portion  of  North  Zambezian  territory  not 
secured  or  approached  was  the  Barotse  kingdom  to  the  west  of 
the  Kafue.  This  we  understood  was  being  attended  to  from 
South  Africa,  through  the  Lake  Ngami  region.  "British  Central 
Africa"  was  therefore  made  safe. 


CHAPTER  XI 


In  May,  1890,  I  received  permission  to  return  to  England  via 
the  Cape  of  Good  Hope,  so  as  to  see  Mr.  Rhodes  by  the  way, 
especially  in  regard  to  Mr.  Sharpe's  treaties.  I  left  my  steamer 
at  Port  Elizabeth,  as  that  seemed  then  the  best  starting  place  for 
Kimberley.  We  had  come  to  an  anchor  there  on  the  dawn  of 
Ascension  Day,  a  hypothetic  festival  of  the  Church  which  I  had 
almost  forgotten,  but  which  I  found  highly  reverenced  by  Protes- 
tant South  Africa  and  held  as  a  public  holiday  on  which  no 
avoidable  work  was  done :  or  at  any  rate  not  done  after  breakfast 
time.  I  left  the  ship  (which  I  was  to  rejoin  afterwards  at  Cape 
Town)  at  eight  in  the  morning,  and  on  the  quay  or  pier  I  met  a 
grave-looking  man  who  offered  me  for  sale  at  the  cost  of  £6  the 
most  magnificent  kaross  I  have  ever  beheld.  It  was  made  of 
numerous  skins  of  the  caracal  lynx,  a  handsome  cat  about  half- 
way in  size  between  a  wild-cat  and  a  leopard,  almost  without 
markings,  its  fur  a  reddish-brown  gray.  By  one  of  those  unex- 
plained affinities  in  fauna  between  North  Africa  and  Africa  south 
of  the  Zambezi  the  caracal  is  found  in  both  extremes  of  Africa, 
though  I  dare  say  by  now  in  Cape  Colony  it  has  become  extinct. 

The  price  being  only  £6,  I  was  just  going  to  accept  this  valua- 
tion, pay  for  and  take  over  the  kaross,  when  a  boisteyous  com- 
panion from  the  ship  who  had  rather  forced  his  company  on  me, 
dissuaded  me.  "If  you  wait  till  we've  had  breakfast  at  the  hotel 
and  come  back  you'll  get  it  for  a  pound  less."  Like  a  fool  I 
allowed  myself  to  be  persuaded ;  and  telling  the  owner — a  white 
man  who  had  a  naturalist's  shop  near  the  quay — that  I  would 
think  the  matter  over  whilst  I  had  my  breakfast,  I  walked  on  to 
the  hotel.  When  later  on  I  went  to  his  shop  it  was  shut  and  shut- 
tered and  the  reason  burst  on  my  attention.  This  was  Ascension 
Day,  observed  apparently  at  Port  Elizabeth  by  the  closing  of  all 

260 


THE  STORY  OF  MY  LIFE 


261 


shops  after  nine  a.m.  I  dare  say  the  fellow-traveler  (whose 
memory  I  have  ever  since  detested)  sought  out  the  naturalist 
subsequently  and  bought  his  kaross.  This  episode  lingered  long 
in  my  memory;  and  remembrance  of  it  has  often  decided  me  to 
close  a  bargain  summarily  when  it  seemed  fair  and  favorable, 
and  waste  no  time  in  haggling  for  a  few  pounds  or  a  few  shil- 
lings. 

From  Port  Elizabeth  I  traveled  direct  to  Kimberley  and  went 
to  stay  with  Mr.  Rhodes  in  his  little  house — a  few  rooms  on  the 
ground  floor — all  buildings  at  Kimberley  being  then  much  on  the 
same  scale.  Some  one  whose  name  I  have  forgotten — possibly 
Archibald  Colquhoun — occupied  one  of  the  three  bedrooms, 
Rhodes  the  second,  and  I  the  third.  I  remember  hearing  the 
name  of  Jameson  mentioned,  but  he  was  then  up-country.  Rather 
to  my  surprise  John  Moir  of  Mandala  was  at  Kimberley  to  see 
Mr.  Rhodes  about  the  incorporation  of  the  African  Lakes  Com- 
pany with  the  British  South  Africa  Company.  There  w^ere  also 
J.  A.  Grant  and  Joseph  Thomson  pausing  here  on  their  way  to 
Bangweulu;  Rochfort  Maguire  returning  from  Matebeleland  to 
England  where  he  was  to  enter  Parliament  on  a  nomination  of 
Parnell ;  and  Archibald  Colquhoun,  the  Administrator  of  Masho- 
naland.  We  were  all  photographed  in  a  group  by  a  Mr.  Middle- 
ton.  "This  photograph  will  become  historic  some  day,"  said 
Rhodes  as  he  looked  at  the  quickly  made  print.    I  wonder? 

From  Kimberley  I  traveled  to  Cape  Town  and  thence  voyaged 
to  England  with  Rochfort  Maguire.  On  the  steamer  was  a 
clever  and  interesting  young  lady,  Miss  Emma  Richardson,  whose 
mother  had  been  a  Johnston  of  Ulster.  She  was  returning  from 
a  visit  to  a  married  sister  in  Cape  Colony,  and  amongst  other 
things  was  a  remarkable  palmist.  She  told  Rochfort  Maguire's 
hand,  and  mine,  and  the  palms  of  most  of  the  first  class  and  some 
of  the  second  class  passengers,  for  one  of  the  usual  ship  charities 
which  levy  a  toll.  What  she  said  to  Maguire  I  did  not  hear ;  what 
she  told  me  I  still  have  in  writing  and  it  was  more  or  less  note- 
worthy, probably  as  an  estimate  of  my  character  and  disposition 


262 


THE  STORY  OF  MY  LIFE 


at  thirty-two  years  of  age,  and  certainly  as  a  forecast  of  my  suc- 
cesses and  failures.  She  foretold  that  at  sixty  or  soon  after  I 
should  reach  a  condition  of  health  necessitating  a  critical  opera- 
tion from  which  I  might  not  recover.  If  I  did,  I  might  attain  a 
considerable  old  age.  She  named  with  something  approaching 
accuracy  the  year  in  which  I  should  marry  and  the  kind  of  woman 
who  would  become  my  wife  six  years  before  this  event  became 
an  actuality;  and  in  general  foreshadowed  my  career  and  the 
principal  events  in  my  after-life  with  a  curious  degree  of  accu- 
racy, even  if  one  only  classes  the  feat  as  an  effort  to  pronounce 
on  the  probable  future  of  a  personality  about  whom  one  has 
learned  a  little  and  divined  much. 

Four  years  afterwards  I  met  Miss  Richardson  again  in  South 
Africa.  By  now — May,  1893 — she  had  become  the  wife  of  a 
bank  manager  who  had  much  to  do  with  Mr.  Rhodes's  financial 
affairs.  These  brought  him  into  contact  with  the  Premier  of 
Cape  Colony  at  his  Rondebosch  residence  when  I  was  staying 
there.  I  have  forgotten  her  married  name,  but  when  I  came  to 
stay  with  Mr.  Rhodes  at  Rondebosch,  she  appeared  one  night  at 
a  dinner-party ;  and  after  the  usual  amazement  at  finding  me  there 
(when,  if  she  thought  about  me  at  all,  she  imagined  me  to  be  in 
England)  she  confessed  to  me — I  took  her  in  to  dinner — two 
overpowering  sensations.  One  was  fear  of  Mr.  Rhodes,  as  it 
would  never  do  to  upset  his  business  with  her  husband ;  and  the 
other  the  desire  to  see  the  palms  of  his  hands,  gauge  his  character, 
his  past,  and  his  possible  future. 

It  was  a  ticklish  subject  on  which  to  face  Rhodes,  as  I  knew  he 
had  a  great  contempt  for  Palmistry.  However,  he  was  in  a  gra- 
cious mood  that  night,  and  consented  to  show  his  hands  to  this 
lady.  She  was  wise  enough  perhaps  to  tell  him  very  little,  but 
made  copious  notes,  and  that  same  evening  wrote  out  her  im- 
pressions and  sent  them  to  me  the  next  morning. 

This  was  on  May  7,  1893,  a  short  time  before  any  news  arrived 

of  the  rupture  between  Jameson  and  Lobengula.    Mrs.   's 

"fortune-telling,"  however,  predicted  some  such  event  happening, 
and  how  enormously  the  outcome  would  add  to  Rhodes's  power 


Above:  Capt.  Cecil  Montgomery 
Maguire. 

Beloiv:  Commander  Percy  Cullen, 
C.M.G.,  head  of  the  Naval  Depart- 
ment, Lake  Nyasa. 


Above:  Alexander  Whyte,  for  years 
the  author's  faithful  companion  in 
Nyasaland. 

Beloiv:  Hermann  von  Wissmann, 
Governor  of  German  East  Africa,  1893. 


THE  STORY  OF  MY  LIFE 


263 


and  prestige ;  but  slie  went  on  to  say  that  not  long  afterwards  "the 
person  in  whom  he  placed  the  greatest  confidence,"  would  by 
some  impetuous  action  bring  his  schemes  apparently  to  ruin — "an 
vitter  smash  in  affairs,  caused  by  an  apparently  trivial  incident;" 
and  though  in  after  time  his  schemes  would  be  successful,  his 
projects  during  his  lifetime  would  always  be  insecure. 

The  only  mistake  she  made  was  in  predicting  a  long  life,  partly 
arising  from  guessing  wrongly  at  Rhodes's  age.  She  imagined 
him  in  1893  to  be  over  fifty.  He  was  in  reality  only  forty. 

To  return,  however,  to  my  experiences  in  1890.  On  our  home- 
ward voyage  we  called  at  Ascension  Island,  and  I  went  on  shore 
to  inspect  this  really  curious  and  interesting  place  which  was  then 
and  is  perhaps  still  regarded  technically  as  "H.M.S.  Ascension." 
Either  I  knew  the  Captain  Commandant  or  he  did  not  regard  pre- 
vious acquaintance  as  a  necessary  prelude  for  taking  me  over  the 
low-lying  parts  of  the  island,  where  we  saw  the  turtle  pools  near 
the  sea-shore.  There  was  not  time  to  visit  the  volcanic  peak  in 
the  center,  which  rises  to  a  height  of  about  two  thousand  eight 
hundred  feet.  On  its  steep  flanks  there  is  a  certain  amount  of 
vegetation  in  which  flocks  of  introduced  guinea  fowl  and  pheas- 
ants took  shelter. 

On  going  back  to  the  ship  the  Captain  presented  me  with  two 
turtles  of  large  size  out  of  the  collection.  These  were  well 
attended  to  on  board  the  steamer,  and  reached  Plymouth  alive 
and  well.  They  further  accompanied  me  to  London.  One  of 
them  I  presented  to  the  Zoological  Society,  and  the  other  I  sent 
to  Lady  Salisbury  in  Arlington  Street,  where  it  arrived  in  time, 
and  most  appropriately,  to  make  turtle  soup  for  a  dinner  of  im- 
portance she  was  about  to  give  to  a  variety  of  persons  who  had 
been  engaged  in  negotiating  an  important  agreement  with  Ger- 
many as  to  the  delimitation  of  Spheres  of  influence  or  Protecto- 
rates in  Africa. 

Somehow  the  landing  at  Plymouth  with  these  turtles,  and  the 
connection  of  my  name  with  the  scarcely-ended  Portuguese  crisis 
seemed  to  the  Inspectors  at  the  Custom  House  sufficient  warranty 
for  passing  my  luggage  with  a  friendly  wave  of  the  hand.  But 
it  was  otherwise  with  Mr.  Maguire  who  had  been  so  much  away 


264 


THE  STORY  OF  MY  LIFE 


from  England  in  Hong-Kong  and  afterwards  in  South  Central 
Africa  that  he  had  forgotten  there  could  be  any  excitement  in 
Ireland  which  would  become  attached  to  persons  with  Irish  sur- 
names. Prior  to  his  engagement  by  Cecil  Rhodes  ^  as  a  private 
secretary,  he  had  fulfilled  the  same  duties  (after  leaving  Oxford) 
with  a  Colonial  Governor.  But  to  the  Inspector  of  Customs  at 
Plymouth  he  seemed  a  highly  suspicious  person,  not  wholly  un- 
connected with  ideas  of  dynamite;  consequently  his  luggage  was 
examined  to  the  minutest  detail,  and  he  might  have  finally  missed 
the  special  express  to  London,  if  I  had  not  returned  to  enquire 
and  tell  the  Inspector  who  he  was  and  all  about  him. 

On  our  return  voyage  together  he  had  told  me  something 
about  one  of  his  brothers  in  India  which  had  impressed  me  with 
the  feeling  that  if  the  British  Government  was  going  to  take 
British  Central  Africa  in  hand  and  tackle  decisively  its  most 
alarming  problem,  the  Arab  Slave  Trade,  Cecil  Maguire  would 
be  the  very  person  to  handle  the  troops. 

At  Lady  Salisbury's  dinner-party  to  the  negotiators  of  the 
Anglo-German  agreement,  the  Duke  of  Saxe-Coburg  Gotha — 
not  long  before  known  to  us  as  the  Duke  of  Edinburgh — was 
present. 

He  had  apparently  interested  himself  considerably  in  trying 
to  promote  this  understanding.  After  leaving  the  dining-room 
he  told  Lady  Salisbury  he  would  like  to  talk  over  the  question 
with  me  privately,  so  she  led  the  way  to  the  top  of  a  staircase, 
which  communicated  with  some  undisturbed  smoking-room  be- 
low. The  Duke  walked  swiftly,  Lady  Salisbury  had  a  long  train 
which  tripped  her  up,  with  the  result  that  we  all  three  lost  our 
balance  and  fell  down  the  short  staircase  on  to  the  carpet  below. 
Fortunately  the  two  elder  people  averred  that  they  Avere  not  in 
the  least  bit  hurt,  and  sat  on  the  lowest  step  dissolved  in  laughter. 
Then  Lady  Salisbury  left  us  to  our  conversation  which  interested 
me  very  much  by  its  foreshadowing  of  long  subsequent  events, 
turning  as  it  did  on  the  outlook  of  the  German  Emperor. 

1  He  was  the  son  of  an  Irish  parson  whose  cure  was  on  the  Duke  of 
Abercorn's  estate. 


The  author's  first  ideas  as  to  the  extent  of  British  Africa,  1888-1890.     Map  drawn 
to  illustrate  them  at  a  lecture  given  at  Liverpool, 
October  21,  1890. 


THE  STORY  OF  MY  LIFE 


265 


Sir  Percy  Anderson  was  at  this  dinner,  just  back  from  Berlin. 
He  told  me  then  how  the  North  Nyasa  and  Nyasa-Tanganyika 
treaties  had  reached  him  just  in  the  nick  of  time.  The  Germans 
had  wished  to  claim  the  northern  half  of  Lake  Nyasa  and  the 
region  between  Nyasa  and  Tanganyika  so  as  to  approach  the 
basin  of  the  Congo  in  that  direction,  but  the  arrival  of  this  sheaf 
of  treaties  had  enabled  him  to  make  a  firm  stand  along  all  the 
west  coast  of  Nyasa  and  the  eastern  edge  of  the  plateau  up  to  the 
southeast  coast  of  Tanganyika. 

Curiously  enough,  my  own  thoughts  at  this  time  were  rather 
more  fixed  on  Nigeria.  I  had  an  increasing  desire  to  return  there, 
both  for  the  Government  and  the  Royal  Niger  Company. 

In  the  early  part  of  August,  1890,  I  received  a  letter  from  Lord 
Salisbury  which  took  me  by  surprise.  He  informed  me  in  very 
kind  terms  of  the  Queen's  bestowal  of  a  C.B.,  alike  for  my  serv- 
ices in  regard  to  the  Niger  Delta,  Mogambique  and  Nyasaland.  A 
little  later  in  the  year  I  saw  him  and  he  told  me  he  wished  tG  send 
me  back  to  the  Zambezi  regions,  to  organize  them  into  a  Protec- 
torate, and  that  Major  Macdonald  ^  was  to  undertake  the  man- 
agement of  the  Niger  Delta. 

A  great  excitement  in  London  in  the  early  summer  of  1890 
was  occasioned  by  Stanley's  marriage  with  Miss  Dorothy  Ten- 
nant.  Miss  Tennant's  mother,  her  brother  and  unmarried  sister 
lived  in  a  much-to-be-envied  house.  No.  2  Richmond  Terrace, 
Whitehall — surely  one  of  the  most  delectable  sites  for  a  private 
house  in  London?  Her  elder  sister  had  married  Mr.  Frederick 
Myers  the  psychologist,^  whom  I  had  known  otherwise  before 

1  Afterwards  Sir  Claude  Macdonald,  Ambassador  to  Japan. 

2  Frederick  Myers  was  one  of  the  most  remarkable — and  at  the  same  time, 
lovable — persons  I  ever  met.  He  lived  before  his  proper  time.  It  is  difficult 
to  think  of  him  as  having  died  in  1901.  Somewhere  or  when — I  think  down 
at  Shrublands  in  Suffolk,  where  he  was  visiting  Lord  de  Saumarez — he  let 
me  copy  one  of  his  poems  afterwards  published  posthumously. 

FROM  BRUTE  TO  MAN 
Through  such  fierce  hours  thy  brute  forefather  won 
Thy  mounting  hope,  the  adventure  of  the  son: 
Such  pains  astir  has  gloomy  heart  within 
That  nameless  creature  rvandered  from  his  kin; 
Smote  his  broad  breast,  and  when  the  woods  had  rung 


266 


THE  STORY  OF  MY  LIFE 


and  since  the  Stanley  marriage,  down  to  the  time  of  his  death; 
for  he  was  a  great  friend  of  my  wife's  uncle,  Lord  de  Saumarez. 
Dorothy  Tennant  I  had  first  seen  at  a  tea-party  given  by  Stanley 
at  his  rooms  in  Old  Bond  Street  in  1885.  When  I  came  home  in 
1888  she  met  me  at  the  various  dinner-parties  and  questioned  me 
anxiously  as  to  the  chances  of  his  lost-to-sight  Emin  Pasha  Relief 
Expedition,  and  I  professed  an  optimistic  belief  in  its  eventual 
emergence  into  safety. 

When  Stanley  returned  to  London  in  the  late  spring  of  1890, 
Dorothy  Tennant  was  one  of  the  first  people  to  meet  him  (I  think 
under  the  wing  of  the  Baroness  Burdett  Coutts),  and  they  soon 
announced  their  engagement.  Stanley  must  then  have  been  just 
fifty  years  of  age. 

I  called  on  both  of  them  when  I  reached  London  and  was  spe- 
cially enjoined  to  be  present  at  their  Westminster  Abbey  wedding. 
Stanley  at  the  time  of  his  wedding  looked  almost  a  dying  man. 
He  sat  during  a  portion  of  the  ceremony,  and  tottered  out  on  his 
wife's  arm — I  think — rather  than  giving  her  his.  But  he  slowly 
recovered  health  and  some  degree  of  strength  during  the  honey- 
moon, on  which  he  was  accompanied  by  the  celebrated  Dr.  T.  H, 
Parke  of  his  great  expedition. 

Afterwards,  succeeding  a  great  lecturing  world-tour,  he  lived 
tranquilly  at  2  Richmond  Terrace ;  and  at  a  house  he  acquired  in 
the  western  part  of  Surrey,  near  Pirbright,  where  amongst  other 
things  he  designed  in  his  hilly  garden  a  remarkable  edition  (in 
miniature)  of  the  Central  African  Lake  and  River  system,  with 
Ruwenzori — which  he  had  discovered — rising  as  a  sharp  ridge 
between  the  Semliki  and  the  Victoria  Nyanza.    He  recovered 

To  bellowing  preludes  of  that  thunderous  tongue, 

With  hopes  half-born,  with  burning  tears  unshed. 

Bowed  low  his  terrible  and  lonely  head; 

With  arms  uncouth,  with  knees  that  scarce  could  kneel 

Upraised  his  speechless  ultimate  appeal. 

Ay,  and  Heaven  heard,  and  was  with  him  and  gave 

The  gift  that  made  him  master  and  not  slave. 

Even  in  that  stress  and  horror  of  his  fate 

His  thronging  cry  came  half -articulate, 

And  some  strange  light,  past  knowing,  past  control, 

Rose  in  his  eyes  and  shone,  and  was  a  soul. 


THE  STORY  OF  MY  LIFE 


267 


health  and  strength  sufficiently  to  make  a  remarkable  journey  out 
to  South  Africa  (1897)  to  meet  Cecil  Rhodes.  Here  I  think  he 
traveled  northwards  till  he  saw  the  Zambezi  and  the  Victoria 
Falls. 

(My  wife  and  I  saw  a  good  deal  of  the  Stanleys,  during  the 
remainder  of  Stanley's  life.  One  day — I  think  in  1899 — Lady 
Stanley  wrote  to  us,  saying  that  her  husband  and  she  had  decided 
to  adopt  a  little  child,  who — I  think  she  said — was  a  relative,  near 
or  distant,  of  Stanley,  in  North  Wales.  She  told  us  that  they 
were  going  to  call  the  boy  "Denzil"  and  bring  him  up  as  their 
adopted  son.  We  went  to  see  them  and  Denzil,  and  continued  at 
intervals  to  do  so  until  some  years  after  Stanley's  death. 

During  the  funeral  service  in  1904  my  wife  was  asked  to  sit 
next  to  Lady  Stanley,  and  I  was  chosen  as  one  of  the  bearers  of 
the  catafalque  into  the  Abbey,  and  from  the  Abbey  to  the  ceme- 
tery railway  station  in  the  Westminster  Bridge  Road ;  and  thence 
accompanied  the  coffin  down  to  Brookwood,  where  the  remains 
were  incinerated.  When  this  was  done  we  repaired  to  Stanley's 
house  on  the  Surrey  heights  not  far  away.  Here  we  were  in- 
formed that  Denzil  was  being  brought  up  as  Sir  Henry's  heir, 
which  was  indeed  the  case.) 

Much  of  my  spare  time  during  the  latter  half  of  1890  and  the 
opening  months  of  1891  was  taken  up  with  an  attempt  to  write 
the  true  life  of  Livingstone.  This  was  a  task  most  poorly  paid — 
for  I  only  received  £100  down  from  the  publishers  for  the  com- 
pleted work  (which  was  afterwards  re-published  in  a  second  or 
more  editions) — but  was  undertaken  at  the  earnest  request  of  his 
daughter,  Mrs.  Livingstone  Bruce.  It  involved  my  going  to  Scot- 
land in  the  autumn  of  1890  and  staying  with  relations  (Willy 
Anderson  and  his  wife)  who  lived  at  no  great  distance  from 
Blantyre.  Willy  Anderson  was  an  expert  photographer  in  those 
days,  and  he  accompanied  me  about  the  scenes  of  Livingstone's 
youth,  photographing  anything  likely  to  be  of  interest. 

We  found  Blantyre  (Lanarkshire)  in  that  year  (1890)  very 
little  altered  from  what  it  must  have  appeared  when  Livingstone 


268 


THE  STORY  OF  MY  LIFE 


was  still  there — boy  and  youth.  The  gaunt,  granite  house  in 
which  he  lived — not  trumpery  or  ignoble  in  aspect,  but  with  filthy 
surroundings ;  the  factory  in  which  he  had  worked,  and  the  alle- 
viatingly  beautiful  scenery  of  the  Clyde.  Many  years  afterwards 
I  re-visited  this  neighborhood  after  lecturing  in  Glasgow  and  was 
shocked  at  its  degradation  and  damning  ugliness.  A  hideous 
monument  to  Livingstone,  I  think,  had  been  erected  on  the  out- 
skirts, but  the  village  was  unspeakably  filthy,  everything  possible 
had  been  done  to  make  the  Clyde  ugly ;  and  this  ugliness  and  the 
daytime  drunkenness  of  the  sodden  people  made  on  one  a  very 
sad  impression. 

The  persons  chiefly  interested  in  this  biography  were  Mr.  and 
Mrs.  Alexander  Bruce.  Mrs.  Bruce  or  Mrs.  Livingstone  Bruce 
as  I  think  she  was  afterwards  styled,  was  Livingstone's  loved 
daughter  Agnes,  in  whose  education  in  France  he  had  taken 
special  interest.  Her  husband  was  a  noteworthy  person  in  Edin- 
burgh, connected  at  one  time  with  a  great  brewery,  which  also 
included  Sir  George  Younger  among  its  directors.  For  both  of 
them  I  conceived  a  great  liking.  Mrs.  Bruce  was  not  only  nice  to 
look  at,  but  was  a  well-educated  woman  of  the  world.  She 
wished  her  father's  life  to  be  truly  written  without  pandering  to 
religious  emotions. 

She  pointed  out  to  me  the  way  in  which  his  scientific  work  had 
been  overlooked,  minimized  in  Horace  Waller's  two  volumes  on 
his  Last  Journeys.  The  Revd.  Horace  Waller  had  been  at  the 
commencement  of  the  'sixties  a  young  lay  enthusiast  taken  out  by 
the  Universities'  Mission  to  work  in  Nyasaland.  On  his  return 
home,  after  a  brief  glimpse  of  real  Africa,  he  had  studied  for  the 
Church  and  become  a  clergyman  in  Hampshire  and  a  perfervid 
champion  of  Livingstone.  But  he  cared  for  him  only  as  a  mis- 
sionary, scarcely  at  all  as  a  geographical  explorer. 

He  admitted  in  his  preface  that  he  had  kept  most  of  Living- 
stone's scientific  work  out  of  his  book,  proposing  that  it  should  be 
published  apart.  It  never  was  afterwards  produced,  excepting  a 
small  portion  recovered  by  Mrs.  Bruce.  Livingstone's  vocabu- 
laries and  many  of  his  notes  regarding  the  distribution  of  birds 


THE  STORY  OF  MY  LIFE 


269 


and  beasts,  of  native  tribes,  and  of  botany,  written  down  l)etween 
1858  and  1873,  have  seemingly  been  lost  to  the  world.  What- 
ever remained  in  her  possession  Mrs.  Bruce  placed  in  my  hands 
and  the  documents  were  published  in  my  book. 

As  soon  as  I  learned  that  my  new  task  was  to  be  the  organ- 
izing into  an  administered  Protectorate  of  Nyasaland  and  north- 
ern Zambezia  I  began  to  select  a  stafif  to  assist  me.  Alfred  Sharpe 
was  to  be  my  Deputy  Commissioner;  a  son  of  my  old  friend 
Philip  Lutley  Sclater  was  to  be  Surveyor  and  Roadmaker;  and 
Alexander  Whyte  my  Botanist  and  Natural  History  Collector.^ 

The  post  of  Military  Commandant,  in  charge  of  a  contingent 
of  Indian  troops,  was  to  be  offered  to  Captain  Cecil  Maguire. 
Maguire  was  then  secretary  to  an  Indian  Mobilization  Scheme 
and  was  at  Simla  or  with  the  Viceroy  at  Calcutta.  Lord  Roberts 
thought  very  highly  of  him,  and  as  already  mentioned,  I  had  first 
heard  of  him  through  his  brother  Rochfort. 

Numerous  other  subordinate  appointments  were  to  be  made  by 
me  when  I  returned  to  Nyasaland.  I  left  England  in  April,  1891, 
and  met  most  of  these  people  at  Zanzibar,  Mozambique,  or  the 
Chinde  mouth  of  the  Zambezi. 

Somewhere  about  this  time  the  treaty  with  Portugal,  settling 
all  the  East  African  frontiers,  was  signed  and  ratified,  and  the 
dispute  regarding  the  north  side  of  the  Zambezi  was  at  an  end ; 
though  Mr.  Rhodes  was  most  disappointed  regarding  the  conces- 
sions south  of  the  Zambezi,  in  Manikaland. 

^  Mr.  Whyte  was  just  sixty  when  he  joined  the  service  of  the  British 
Central  Africa  Administration  as  Botanist  and  Natural  History  Collector. 
He  had  been  for  many  years  a  planter  in  Ceylon  with  varying  success,  but 
at  all  times  was  an  industrious  collector  and  transmitter  of  botanical  speci- 
mens and  a  skilful  taxidermist  and  a  zoological  student.  I  heard  of  him 
through  inserting  an  advertisement  in  the  Times;  and  submitting  candidates 
to  a  committee  of  selection,  over  which  Dr.  Sclater  of  the  Zoological  Society 
presided.  On  their  recommendation  I  engaged  Mr.  Whyte  who  rendered 
signal  services  thenceforth  in  British  Central  Africa,  East  Africa,  and 
Uganda.  On  account  of  his  ability  and  his  maintenance  of  good  health 
and  physical  vigor  he  remained  at  work  in  Africa  till  about  1906.  winding 
up  his  career  by  two  years  as  a  botanical  collector  in  Liberia.  He  died  in 
1912.  His  name  is  attached  to  the  Mlanje  "cedar,"  and  to  other  discoveries 
in  mammals,  birds,  fishes,  insects,  and  molluscs. 


270 


THE  STORY  OF  MY  LIFE 


Our  first  concentration  was  at  Chiromo;  but  on  our  way 
thither,  the  two  new  gunboats  (H.M.S.S.  Herald  and  Mosquito) 
placed  on  the  Zambezi  landed  us  at  a  point  much  lower  down  than 
Chiromo  on  the  right  bank  of  the  Shire.  This  was  just  above 
the  Ziwe-ziwe  marsh,  which  in  those  days  covered  much  of  the 
confluence  between  the  Zambezi  and  the  Shire.  The  Lower  Shire 
district  (as  I  named  it)  brought  the  British  Protectorate  very 
near  to  the  Lower  Zambezi. 

We  chose  the  site  for  a  town  on  the  right  bank  of  the  Shire 
and  named  it  "Port  Herald,"  after  the  name  given  to  the  prin- 
cipal gunboat ;  but  this  region  to  the  south  of  the  Ruo-Shire  con- 
fluence had  in  those  days  very  few  villages.  Its  inhabitants  had 
been  constantly  ravaged  by  half-caste  slaving  caravans,  and 
secreted  themselves  in  the  rocky  hills  and  tangled,  bush  of  the 
interior.  At  Chiromo  however,  on  either  side  of  the  Shire,  much 
better  circumstances  began  through  the  presence  there  as  chiefs 
of  Livingstone's  Makololo. 

Much  of  the  subsequent  story  of  "British  Central  Africa"  (as 
I  named  the  Protectorate)  can  be  read  in  my  book  which  bears 
this  title.  There  is  no  need  to  tell  the  whole  tale  twice  over;  I 
will  merely  expatiate  on  the  more  striking  episodes  and  problems. 

Almost  on  the  morrow  of  our  arrival  at  the  confines  of  the 
Protectorate  we  were  forced  to  resort  to  arms,  the  Yao  slave- 
trading  chiefs  being  our  first  assailants. 

The  southernmost  of  these  Yaos  was  a  group  dwelling  on  and 
to  the  eastward  of  the  great  mountain  mass  of  Mlanje.  This 
splendid  range  of  heights,  rising  nearly  to  ten  thousand  feet,  is 
visible  up  much  of  the  course  of  the  Lower  Shire.  On  its  eastern 
outskirts  a  Yao  clan  had  established  itself  under  several  chiefs, 
the  most  noteworthy  of  whom  was  Matipwiri.  Another  Yao 
known  as  Chikusi  had  settled  on  the  western  versant  of  the  moun- 
tain. The  people  indigenous  to  the  Mlanje  range  were  of  Nyanja 
stock  dominated  by  these  Muhammadan  Yaos. 

I  have  no  doubt  Chikusi  had  been  raiding  for  years  unrebuked ; 
but  he  chose  to  be  very  obstreperous  at  the  time  of  our  arrival. 


THE  STORY  OF  MY  LIFE 


271 


A  few  Scottish  planters  had  begun  to  settle  in  the  neighborhood 
of  Mlanje,  and  made  an  appeal  to  me  on  my  arrival  to  intervene. 
Captain  Maguire  took  the  matter  in  hand.  He  led  a  force  of 
Sikhs  to  the  mountain,  recruited  a  few  native  auxiliaries,  at- 
tacked Chikusi,  put  him  to  flight;  and  so  secured  the  Mlanje 
region  that  we  had  no  more  trouble  there  for  four  years,  the 
mass  of  the  people  being  of  course  eager  for  our  help  and  pro- 
tection. 

I  made  my  home  and  administrative  headquarters  at  the  Con- 
sulate which  was  re-named  "The  Residency,"  on  the  lower  slopes 
of  the  Zomba  Mountain.  I  think  this  has  remained  ever  since 
the  administrative  headquarters  of  Nyasaland. 

Zomba  was  the  name  given  to  a  great  block  of  tableland  rising 
in  its  interior  heights  to  seven  thousand  feet.  It  lay  to  the  east  of 
the  Upper  Shire,  and  averaged  ten  miles  back  from  the  river.  It 
was  connected  after  a  dip  in  altitude  with  the  Kawinga  Moun- 
tains which  stretched  out  northeastward  to  the  salt  lake  of 
Chilwa.  This  lake  even  as  far  back  as  thirty  years  ago  was  be- 
ginning to  dry  up.  Some  hundreds  of  years  earlier  it  was  prob- 
ably the  head  waters  of  the  Lujenda  River  which  joined  the 
Ruvuma.  Even  at  the  present  time  the  waters  of  Chilwa  and  the 
source  of  the  Lujenda  are  only  separated  by  a  few  miles  and  a 
low  ridge  of  downs. 

The  Zomba  Mountains  or  tableland  had  been  discovered  by 
Livingstone  and  Kirk  about  1859.  It  was  to  my  mind  a  more 
beautiful  region  with  more  striking  scenery  than  the  surround- 
ings of  Blantyre,  and  it  had  been  chosen  by  Consul  Hawes  as  his 
headquarters.  The  Consulate  which  had  been  built  for  him  by 
the  Buchanan  Brothers  was  a  large  brick  building  of  somewhat 
ambitious  design  and  stately  aspect;  a  two-storied  house,  with 
fine  large  rooms  and  two  round  turrets  at  either  end,  up  which 
staircases  ran  on  to  the  first  story  of  the  main  building.  The 
official  entrance  to  the  main  staircase  was  at  the  back  where  the 
ground  rose  in  terraces  to  the  mountain  side.  I  doubt  if  the  house 
was  sufficiently  finished  for  Mr.  Hawes  to  live  in  it. 


272 


THE  STORY  OF  MY  LIFE 


I  had  to  complete  the  structure  in  many  ways  after  I  arrived 
there.  I  decided,  for  instance,  to  replace  the  untidy  thatched  roof 
with  corrugated  iron  neatly  bound  at  the  edges;  for  one  of  the 
points  about  this  material  for  roofage  which  rendered  it  so  sin- 
gularly ugly  was  the  undulating  wiggly-waggly  edge.  I  had 
noticed  in  Natal  that  this  unfinished  look  to  corrugated  iron  could 
be  got  over  by  a  stout,  smooth,  iron  binding  which  gave  it  a  sub- 
stantial straight  edging.  I  also  made  arrangements  on  the  inner 
side  for  a  double  roof  of  timber  with  a  space  between  it  and  the 
iron  so  that  air  circulating  might  relieve  the  frightful  heat  caused 
by  the  sun's  rays  on  the  iron  roof. 

The  south  front  of  the  building  was  already  nice-looking  by 
the  time  I  arrived  there,  because  a  passion-flower  had  been 
planted  at  each  of  the  timber  posts  which  supported  the  broad 
verandas.  So  rapidly  did  this  passion  flower  grow  that  already 
by  the  time  of  my  arrival  it  gave  the  house  a  frontage  of  verdure. 

The  surroundings,  however,  looked  unkempt.  There  were 
straw-roofed  clay  huts  for  native  servants,  and  brick  outer  build- 
ings to  serve  as  kitchens ;  but  in  the  course  of  a  year  all  this  was 
brought  into  capital  order.  Everything  rubbishy  and  temporary 
was  cleared  away,  and  substantial  buildings  were  erected  in  ac- 
cord with  the  design  of  the  house,  and  so  placed  that  in  any  native 
disturbance,  the  Residency  might  stand  a  siege ;  the  buildings  at 
the  sides  and  back  being  arranged  so  as  to  form  a  hollow  square. 

On  the  south  front  Mr.  Whyte  arranged  in  terraces  really 
beautiful  flower  gardens,  banana  avenues,  and  lawns.  In  the 
hollow  square  at  the  back,  large  cages  were  eventually  built  to 
hold  my  collection  of  pets.  These  were  constructed  out  of  ma- 
terials sent  up  from  Natal,  and  would  not  have  looked  unseemly 
in  the  Zoological  Gardens.  Here,  during  the  six  years  of  my 
tenancy  dwelt  leopards  and  serval  cats,  baboons  and  monkeys, 
and  a  variety  of  birds.  Some  of  the  birds,  such  as  the  guinea 
fowl  and  crowned  cranes,  were  allowed  their  liberty,  being  easily 
domesticated. 

The  crowned  cranes  were  quite  a  feature  at  Zomba.  Except 
that  they  would  not  let  one  touch  them,  they  were  otherwise 


THE  STORY  OF  MY  LIFE 


273 


extraordinarily  tame,  inquisitive,  and  intelligent.  They  spent 
much  of  their  time  raiding  the  precincts  for  grasshoppers  and 
locusts.  To  discover  and  arouse  these  pests,  they  would  tap  or 
slap  the  herbage  with  their  feet,  and  pounce  on  the  insects  as  they 
rose.  The  guinea  fowl  also  revealed  strange  qualities  of  intelli- 
gence and  affection.  They  had  been  reared  from  wild  chickens 
caught  by  the  natives,  and  brought  in  for  sale.  One  of  them 
became  so  passionately  attached  to  me  that  it  was  quite  an  object 
of  remark.  It  used  to  fly  up  on  to  the  veranda  of  my  private 
rooms  on  the  first  floor,  when  the  mid-day  meal  was  ready,  ac- 
company me  to  the  dining-room  and  stand  at  my  side  to  receive 
scraps  thrown  to  it.  It  delighted  above  all,  to  follow  me  on  my 
short  walks  or  rides,  running  with  me  or  after  me.  But  what  it 
most  enjoyed,  was  to  come  with  me  when  I  inspected  more  or 
less  formally  the  guard  of  native  troops.  It  used  to  look  so  ridic- 
ulous on  these  occasions,  standing  by  my  side,  chattering  at  the 
men,  that  it  had  to  be  removed  sometimes  by  a  native  attendant. 

The  magnificent  leopard  (as  it  grew  up  to  be)  was  brought  to 
us  in  the  first  year  of  my  stay,  as  a  little  cub.  Mr.  Whyte  reared 
it  on  milk.  In  the  third  year  of  its  residence,  though  perfectly 
good-tempered,  it  was  apt  to  be  a  little  rough,  especially  with 
guests,  who  might  be  excused  if  they  showed  alarm  when  a 
largish  leopard  leaped  on  their  backs;  so  I  had  a  commodious 
dwelling  constructed  for  it  at  the  back  of  the  house.  Here  I  used 
to  go  of  an  afternoon,  and  push  back  the  sliding  door  to  take  the 
leopard  out  for  a  walk. 

When  I  returned  from  India  in  1895,  I  brought  with  me  great 
additions  to  my  poultry  yard  and  farm,  in  order  to  try  to  intro- 
duce various  domestic  beasts  and  birds  of  Indian  stock.  Amongst 
these  was  a  small  troop  of  Chinese  geese.  One  morning  I  had 
just  pushed  back  the  wooden  door  of  the  leopard's  cage,  forget- 
ting all  about  the  geese,  when  suddenly  they  appeared,  with  the 
gander  at  their  head.  The  leopard  was  emerging  from  his  cage 
on  to  the  cement  path;  the  gander  and  his  troop  came  straight 
at  him  with  outstretched  wings.  I  threw  myself  on  the  leopard's 
back,  clutched  his  strong  neck  with  all  my  strength,  and  pushed 


274 


THE  STORY  OF  MY  LIFE 


him  back  into  the  cage.  I  think  this  episode  testified  to  his  docil- 
ity and  the  courage  of  the  Chinese  geese. ^ 

But  Zomba  was  very  wild  in  those  times.  Not  only  was  it 
situated  in  the  Yao  country  and  subject  to  sporadic  attacks  from 
the  Yao  slave-traders  and  bandits,  but  it  was  in  a  country  swarm- 
ing with  lions.  Almost  every  night  from  sunset  to  sunrise  you 
could  hear  lions  roaring.  I  used  even  to  think  this  incident  de- 
lightful, as  one  lay  after  dinner,  on  long  cane  chairs  smoking  or 
drinking  cofifee,  and  hearing  the  solemn  cries  of  these  beasts  from 
no  farther  away  than  the  bottom  of  my  garden  fence.  Occa- 
sionally they  managed  to  break  into  the  hollow  square  at  the  back, 
attracted  by  my  collection  of  pets. 

Amongst  these  was  a  portly  wild  pig,  a  Potamochccrus,  which 
grew  in  course  of  time  to  be  large  and  tusked.  He  was  never 
caught  by  the  lion,  because  of  the  intricate  arrangement  of  his 
sty,  but  once  in  a  way  a  lion  would  get  entangled  in  the  outer  sty, 
and  be  at  our  mercy,  so  that  we  shot  him  through  the  stakes. 
Leopards  invaded  our  premises  more  frequently  than  lions,  at- 
tracted, perhaps,  by  the  scent  of  the  captive  leopard,  who,  how- 
ever, showed  them  no  sympathy,  sometimes  arousing  our  atten- 
tion by  his  growls.  Nevertheless  on  occasions,  the  leopards  would 
commit  awful  ravages  among  the  herd  of  goats,  killing  perhaps 
seven  in  one  night. 

A  hundred  yards  to  the  east  of  the  Residency  a  path  descended 
through  a  picturesque  wood  to  the  rushing  waters  of  the  little 
River  Mlungusi  (the  Mlungusi  joined  the  Likangala  River  and 
flowed  into  Lake  Chilwa.)  It  rose  in  the  very  middle  of  the 
Zomba  Plateau  in  a  depression  which  seemed  to  be  the  remains  of 
a  lake  at  an  altitude  of  five  thousand  feet.  It  coursed  southeast- 
ward down  the  mountain  sides  in  a  series  of  truly  lovely  cascades 
and  largely  through  a  tunnel  of  superb  trees.  The  music  of  its 
falls  filled  the  ear  at  night-time.  In  1897,  my  successor,  Mr. 
Sharpe,  turned  its  force  to  practical  purpose,  to  generate  power 
for  an  electric  light  station  which  lit  up  all  the  buildings  at  Zomba. 

^  After  my  departure  for  England  in  i8g6,  this  remarkable  leopard — as 
handsome  as  he  was  amiable — was  presented  by  Mr.  Sharpe  to  Cecil  Rhodes 
and  lived  for  many  years  afterwards  at  Rondebosch. 


THE  STORY  OF  MY  LIFE 


275 


My  affection  for  this  place,  with  its  superb  views  towards 
Mlanje,  its  access  up  picturesque  mountains  to  an  absohitely  tem- 
perate cHmate  above,  its  quietude  only  broken  in  those  days  by 
the  cries  of  wild  beasts,  made  me  decide  with  little  hesitation  to 
constitute  Zomba  as  the  headquarters  of  the  Nyasaland  Govern- 
ment, in  preference  to  Blantyre  some  forty  miles  on  the  south- 
west. The  altitude  of  the  two  places  was  about  the  same — three 
thousand  feet.  But  at  Zomba  you  could  ascend  in  the  course  of  an 
afternoon  walk  up  to  seven  thousand  feet,  and  at  Blantyre  there 
was  no  altitude  within  easy  distance  above  five  thousand  feet. 

At  Blantyre  and  in  its  surrounding  suburbs  there  came  to  be  in 
course  of  time  a  population  of  some  two  hundred  Europeans. 
Here  was  a  large  establishment  of  the  Church  of  Scotland  Mis- 
sion; and  the  Mandala  suburb  was  the  headquarters  of  the  Afri- 
can Lakes  Company.  Round  about  was  a  noteworthy  body  of 
English  or  Scottish  coffee  planters  and  prospectors.  The  Euro- 
pean population  must  now  have  grown  to  over  a  thousand. 

The  choice  of  Zomba  for  the  Administrative  residence  had 
really  been  made  by  Consul  Hawes,  and  I  was  glad  to  endorse  it, 
because  I  realized  the  comparative  value  of  the  isolation,  and  the 
good  effect  on  one's  health  of  the  superb  scenery  of  which  my  eye 
never  wearied.  Although  I  really  only  continued  what  my  prede- 
cessor had  done,  I  was  conscious  as  the  months  went  by  of  a 
sense  of  hostility  in  regard  to  this  selection,  emanating  from 
Blantyre.  That  place  was  pretty,  but  Zomba  was  superb.  Blan- 
tyre was  virtually  "safe."  At  Zomba  during  the  earlier  years  of 
my  stay  there  was  a  somewhat  thrilling  sense  of  danger,  attended 
by  a  pleasant  feeling  of  security  within  its  defences. 

I  had  not  lived  there  long  before  it  was  necessary  to  proceed  to 
the  south  end  of  Lake  Nyasa,  to  begin  dealing  with  the  traffic 
across  the  lake  or  the  Upper  Shire  of  the  slave-trading  caravans; 
and  also  to  afHrm  our  position  with  regard  to  Mponda.  This  Yao 
chief,  who  commanded  the  exit  of  the  Shire  River  from  Lake 
Nyasa,  was  beginning  to  make  frequent  demands  for  tolls  from 
the  steamers  of  the  Universities'  Mission  and  the  Lakes  Com- 
pany, when  they  entered  or  quitted  Lake  Nyasa.   He  really  held 


276 


THE  STORY  OF  MY  LIFE 


at  his  mercy  in  those  days  all  the  British  enterprise  on  Lakes 
Nyasa  and  Tanganyika,  since  he  could  obstruct  the  use  of  the 
Shire  as  a  means  of  communication. 

Accordingly,  as  soon  as  Captain  Maguire  returned  from  deal- 
ing with  the  slave-traders  on  Mount  Mlanje,  I  asked  him  to 
organize  an  expedition  up  the  Shire  to  Nyasa,  which  would  be 
accompanied  by  about  fifty  of  our  Sikh  soldiers.  Marching  up 
the  left  bank  we  found  ourselves  at  last  opposite  to  Mponda's 
large  and  straggling  town,  at  the  place  subsequently  named  "Fort 
Johnston." 

The  only  reason  we  camped  there  first  was  its  lack  of  habita- 
tions and  its  being  immediately  opposite  the  thickest-populated 
part  of  Mponda's  town.  The  actual  shore  of  Lake  Nyasa  was 
nearly  three  miles  distant  to  the  north.  The  reedy  plain  stretched 
eastward  some  twenty  miles  or  more  to  the  flanks  of  mountain 
ranges,  where  dwelt,  we  were  told,  a  very  formidable  Yao  chief 
named  Zarafi. 

As  already  mentioned  I  had  made  a  treaty  with  Mponda  in 
1889,  but  on  my  arrival  two  years  afterwards  he  was  in  a  fickle 
mood,  won  over  to  opposition  by  the  Arab  slave-traders  and  their 
Yao  allies. 

Our  arrival  opposite  this  town,  moreover,  was  an  inconvenient 
event,  as  it  coincided  with  the  crossing  of  a  large  slaver  caravan 
bound  for  the  east  coast,  and,  for  the  feeding  of  which  a  good 
deal  of  the  Nyanja  population  to  the  west  of  the  river,  had  been 
raided.  I  attempted  to  stop  this  caravan  from  proceeding  east- 
ward but  was  only  partly  successful. 

Some  of  the  slaves  ran  away  and  took  refuge  in  our  camp,  but 
the  majority  of  them  were  carried  off  to  the  eastern  shores  of  the 
lake.  Mponda  decided  to  intervene  on  behalf  of  the  slave-traders 
and  fired  at  us  across  the  river  with  little  or  no  effect.  Meantime 
our  fifty  Sikhs  and  our  hundred  negro  porters — Anyanja, 
Atonga,  Makua,  and  Swahili — set  to  work  under  Maguire's  guid- 
ance and  in  three  days  had  erected  all  round  our  little  camp  a 
formidable  stockade,  and  on  the  river  side  an  embankment  on  to 
which  our  three  mountain  guns  were  erected.    I  think  in  all  five 


THE  STORY  OF  MY  LIFE  277 


days  elapsed  before  we  were  ready  to  take  the  action  I  had  long 
contemplated.  When  everything  was  ready  I  sent  a  letter  in 
Swahili,  written  in  the  Arabic  character  so  that  Mponda  or  one 
of  his  resident  Arabs  might  be  able  to  read  it,  and  told  him  the 
moment  for  his  decision  had  arrived:  that  if  by  sunset  the  Arabs 
remaining  in  his  town  were  not  surrendered  to  us  for  examina- 
tion, and  unless  certain  other  forms  of  surrender  were  not  made 
I  should  bombard  his  town. 

The  letter  was  delivered  on  shore  by  one  of  our  Swahilis  and 
the  man  returned.  No  answer  was  given.  The  moon  rose, 
climbed  the  sky,  and  lit  up  the  scene,  almost  like  daylight.  We 
decided  to  give  Mponda  six  hours'  grace,  but  at  midnight  as  no 
answer  came,  we  fired  our  first  shell.  It  was  an  incendiary,  pur- 
posely chosen  to  set  fire  to  the  river-side  buildings,  not  neces- 
sarily to  kill.  Three  minutes  later  we  landed  another  incendiary 
shell  on  the  spot  where  we  deemed  Mponda's  residence  to  be. 
The  arrival  of  this  shell  and  the  roar  of  the  flames  succeeding  its 
bursting,  turned  the  whole  place  topsy-turvy.  The  people,  to 
the  extent  of  thousands,  swarmed  out  of  the  town  to  the  beach 
with  immense  clamor  and  cries  for  mercy,  and  later  on  two  half- 
caste  Arabs  came  off  in  a  canoe  with  a  message  from  Mponda, 
asking  for  grace,  and  promising  to  give  in  to  my  terms. 

We  said  we  would  stop  the  bombardment  on  the  understanding 
that  Mponda  came  to  meet  me  at  daylight  and  handed  over  the 
Arabs  for  enquiry.  Then  Maguire  and  I  sought  to  get  a  little 
sleep  before  the  morrow's  negotiations. 

On  the  following  morning  there  was  no  Mponda  and  there 
were  no  Arabs,  and  the  town  opposite  appeared  to  be  deserted. 
Maguire  and  I  crossed  over  in  canoes  with  a  guard  of  soldiers, 
but  the  town  was  without  inhabitants.  However,  in  the  course 
of  a  day  or  two  Mponda  from  the  hilly  country  at  the  back 
opened  negotiations  and  entered  into  an  understanding  with  us 
to  stop  the  slave  trade  in  his  territories,  and  to  recognize  the 
land  about  our  fort  as  British  property,  established  at  the  south 
end  of  the  lake  to  examine  the  caravans  to  the  east  coast  and 
check  the  trade  in  slaves. 


278 


THE  STORY  OF  MY  LIFE 


Soon  after  these  matters  were  settled,  peace  was  restored,  with 
that  rapidity  so  customary  in  those  days  in  Africa.  The  African 
Lakes  Company  steamer  came  in  from  Lake  Nyasa  and  took 
Maguire  and  most  of  the  Sikhs  on  a  tour  of  inspection  along 
the  southeast  shores.  Then  she  conveyed  me  down  the  Shire 
to  within  walking  distance  of  Zomba.  Maguire  promised  after 
finishing  the  fort  and  arranging  for  its  garrison,  to  be  with 
me  at  the  Residency  by  Christmas. 

He  never  kept  the  engagement.  I  was  busily  writing  des- 
patches on  the  morning  of  the  fifteenth  of  December,  1891,  when 
unaccountably  I  was  seized  with  the  conviction  that  Maguire 
had  been  killed.  I  was  so  much  affected  by  this  obsession  that 
I  sent  for  Mr.  Whyte,  who  talked  to  me  reassuringly.  In  the 
course  of  the  morning  the  impression  wore  ofif,  and  much  busi- 
ness occupied  my  mind  until  December  twenty-fourth.  Then  feel- 
ing that  any  hour  might  bring  him  within  sight,  I  stood  on  my 
veranda  looking  to  the  west  at  the  slope  of  the  mountains, 
traversed  by  the  road  ascending  from  the  Shire.  As  I  looked 
I  saw  a  black  soldier  in  khaki  uniform,  coming  round  the  hill- 
slope.  I  put  on  a  hat,  ran  out  through  the  garden  and  up  the 
hill  with  an  instinctive  feeling  that  if  this  man  brought  bad 
news  I  had  better  be  there  to  prevent  the  news  from  spreading. 
A  quarter  of  an  hour's  run  and  scramble  brought  me  up  to  this 
exhausted  Atonga,  who  flung  himself  on  the  ground  at  my  feet 
and  began  to  sob.  Presently  he  gasped  out  words  in  Swahili  to 
the  effect  that  all  was  lost.  Captain  Maguire  was  killed,  so  was 
the  Indian  surgeon  with  the  Sikhs,  so  were  the  two  white  men 
on  the  Dornira.  He  and  a  few  other  negro  soldiers  had  escaped 
and  come  down  in  canoes. 

The  news  was  exaggerated  but  mainly  true.  Maguire  had 
followed  up  by  enquiries  the  runaway  slave  caravan  we  had 
inspected,  had  believed  it  to  be  located  at  one  of  Makanjira's 
towns  on  the  southeast  coast  of  Lake  Nyasa.  He  had  put  forty 
of  his  Sikhs  on  the  Lakes  Company's  steamer  Domira,  and  one 
of  his  mountain  guns,  and  had  gone  to  demand  the  surrender 
of  the  caravan.    No  answer  being  received,  he  had  attempted 


THE  STORY  OF  MY  LIFE  279 


to  land  through  the  shallow  water  with  his  Sikhs  and  had  been 
surprised  by  a  band  of  Yao  gun-men,  lying  concealed  in  a  depres- 
sion near  the  lake  shore.  He  had  been  shot  wading  through 
the  water.  Several  of  his  men  had  been  killed,  a  few  Panjabis 
had  possibly  wandered  on  shore  and  been  taken  prisoners,  but 
were  afterwards  released  in  recognition  of  their  common  Muham- 
madanism  (one  of  them  I  believe  after  incredible  marches  and 
sufferings  reached  a  German  station  on  the  east  coast  of  Africa). 
Over  thirty  Sikhs  had  been  gallantly  rescued  by  boats  from  the 
Domira,  but  the  Scottish  engineer  and  captain  who  effected  this 
had  been  badly  wounded. 

The  Parsi  surgeon  Dr.  Sorabji  Boyce,  behaved  with  remark- 
able gallantry.  He  not  only  assisted  the  Sikhs  to  get  back  on 
the  steamer,  but  after  an  interval  of  time,  he  entered  into  com- 
munication with  Makanjira's  Arabs,  and  endeavored  to  recover 
Captain  Maguire's  body.  He  had  attended  to  the  wounds  of 
the  steamer  captain  and  chief  engineer,  and  put  them  away  in 
the  cabin,  so  as  to  conceal  the  extent  of  the  damage  done. 
One  of  the  Arabs,  therefore,  believing  Boyce  and  Keiller  to  be 
the  only  surviving  officers  on  the  steamer,  invited  them  on  shore 
to  negotiate,  promising  in  return  to  surrender  Maguire's  body. 
They  landed  and  were  led  by  deviating  paths  a  distance  of  two 
miles  inland.  There  they  found  themselves  in  a  camp  of  Arabs  and 
Yaos,  and  in  face  of  a  truculent  Arab  named  Saidi  Mwazungu, 
a  slave  trader  who  hampered  my  administration  for  five  years 
until  he  was  killed  in  a  fight  on  the  west  side  of  Lake  Nyasa. 
Saidi  informed  Keiller  and  Boyce  that  they  were  condemned 
to  death.  His  men  poured  volleys  into  them.  Keiller  fell  dead, 
but  Boyce  was  only  wounded.  He  v/as  therefore  flung  on  the 
ground  and  decapitated. 

The  Sikhs  who  returned  to  the  steamer  worked  with  the 
utmost  gallantry  at  night-time  (all  through  the  day  they  were 
fired  at)  to  get  the  ship  cleared  of  the  sand-bank  on  which  she 
was  stuck.  When  she  floated  freely  they  lit  the  fires,  directed 
by  one  or  two  Negro  stokers,  and  the  Domira  steamed  south  to 
Mponda's.    Mponda,  it  must  be  acknowledged,  had  been  true 


280 


THE  STORY  OF  MY  LIFE 


to  his  treaty,  for  the  garrison  at  Fort  Johnston  must  have  been 
very  small.  The  two  wounded  Scotsmen  ultimately  recovered 
and  did  much  more  service  on  Lake  Nyasa.  I  always  consider 
that  the  African  Lakes  Company  behaved  most  considerately 
to  my  own  administration  at  this  time,  in  making  so  light  of 
the  damage  sustained  by  their  steamer.  They  really  acted  as 
if  they  shared  in  the  failures  as  well  as  the  successes  of  the 
administration. 

I  spent  a  horrible  Christmas  Day  at  Blantyre,  having  walked 
the  distance  there — forty  miles — wnth  little  more  than  an  hour's 
rest  half-way.  But  I  felt  some  comfort  from  the  way  in  which 
all  the  white  men  at  this  place,  missionaries,  traders,  planters, 
squared  their  shoulders  to  meet  this  reverse  and  proffered  their 
services. 

I  have  related  in  my  book  how  the  current  of  ill-luck  slowly 
subsided,  then  turned,  and  finally  began  to  run  in  our  favor.  A 
new  commandant  came  out  in  place  of  Maguire;  there  was  a 
great  addition  of  white  men  to  my  administration  staff,  a  rein- 
forcement of  Sikhs  from  India;  and  by  the  spring  of  1893,  I 
was  able  to  take  three  months'  holiday  to  go  and  see  Mr.  Rhodes 
at  Cape  Town.  Interviews  and  discussions  had  become  really 
necessary.  My  administration  of  "British  Central  Africa" 
required  a  larger  force  of  Sikhs  to  keep  the  Arabs  in  check  and 
ensure  free  communication  with  Tanganyika.  I  needed  also  to 
explain  the  situation  to  him  in  regard  to  the  Portuguese.  They 
had  faithfully  abided  by  the  frontier  defined  in  the  1891  Treaty. 
It  was  impossible — as  he  had  proposed  in  1892 — for  me  to  co- 
operate with  his  forces,  south  of  the  Zambezi,  in  marching 
through  to  the  sea  coast.  Rhodes  in  those  days  always  seemed 
to  forget  there  was  a  Europe  jealously  watching  our  advance 
in  Africa  and  ready  to  sympathize  with  Portugal  at  any  infrac- 
tion of  her  boundary. 


CHAPTER  XII 


On  my  arrival  in  Cape  Town  in  May,  1893,  I  found  at  the 
British  South  Africa  Company's  Offices,  an  invitation  to  proceed 
to  Rhodes's  newly  occupied  house  at  Rondebosch.  This  was  an 
exceedingly  pretty  suburb  of  Cape  Town  about  six  miles  out, 
closer  up  to  the  precipitous  heights  of  Table  Mountain.  It  was 
one  of  a  series  of  opulent  suburbs  with  country  houses  for  the 
officials  of  the  Cape  Government.  Not  far  away  was  the  country 
seat  of  the  Governor  and  High  Commissioner  at  Newlands  Cor- 
ner. 

The  house  at  Rondebosch  (it  was  burned  down  some  years 
afterwards  and  entirely  reconstructed)  was  a  very  handsome 
example  of  the  old  Dutch  farmhouse  on  rather  a  grand  scale.  It 
dated  possibly  from  the  early  part  of  the  eighteenth  century,  and 
seemed  to  me  rather  a  splendid  dwelling,  with  a  beautiful  garden 
— not  so  much  in  detail  as  in  scenic  effect  and  glorious  views, 
through  the  tree  trunks,  of  the  wall  of  Table  Mountain. 

The  Rhodes  I  met  then  seemed  to  me  in  many  ways  and  in 
appearance  a  decidedly  different  man  from  the  Rhodes  of  1889 
and  1890.  He  had  lost  that  look  of  keen  masterfulness  and 
healthy  ability  which  had  so  stamped  him  in  '89.  He  told  me 
when  we  drove  out  in  the  afternoon,  that  some  months  previ- 
ously, he  had  had  an  unexpected  and  nasty  fall  from  his  horse, 
out  riding  near  Rondebosch ;  how  he  had  lain  unconscious  for  a 
few  minutes  on  the  road.  He  laid  much  stress  on  this  incident 
at  the  time,  though  I  have  not  seen  it  referred  to  in  any  account 
of  his  life;  he  told  me  himself  he  had  felt  a  different  man  since 
this  fall.  His  manner  had  become  much  more  somber;  he  had 
long  fits  of  sulky  silence  or  dreamy  taciturnity,  alternating  with 
rapid  conversation  so  full  of  great  propositions  backed  by  mone- 
tary proposals,  that  one  felt  almost  obliged  to  ask  him  to  pause 
while  a  note-book  and  pencil  could  be  fetched. 

281 


282 


THE  STORY  OF  MY  LIFE 


Once,  just  after  I  had  retired  to  bed  in  a  magnificently  fur- 
nished bedroom,  he  sent  his  servant  to  summon  me  at  midnight. 
I  was  told  he  wished  to  see  me  urgently,  therefore  I  only  paused 
to  put  on  a  dressing-gown  over  my  pajamas.  I  found  him  in  a 
window  seat  of  his  library,  still  in  evening  dress  and  apparently 
smoking  a  pipe.  In  the  cases  of  much  lesser  men  I  should  have 
concluded  that  he  was  partly  inebriated  or  under  the  influence 
of  a  drug,  but  there  was  no  adjacent  evidence  of  champagne  or 
whisky,  and  although  his  speech  was  rapid  and  his  proposals  were 
magnificent  his  utterance  was  perfectly  distinct.  On  this  occasion 
he  invited  me  to  take  notes,  remarking  that  he  could  not  always 
be  returning  to  this  subject,  and  if  I  did  not  take  down  carefully 
what  he  said,  he  might  not  have  the  opportunity  of  speaking  to 
me  again.  In  about  half  an  hour,  he  had  sketched  out  a  new, 
much  greater  and  more  extended  scheme  for  the  conquest  of 
British  Central  Africa  from  the  slavers,  with  a  proportionately 
larger  subsidy  to  carry  the  scheme  into  effect. 

The  next  day  I  saw  him  again.  He  glanced  through  the  notes 
I  had  written  out,  said  they  were  correct,  and  signed  them  at  the 
bottom. 

The  scheme,  in  fact,  to  promote  which  I  had  made  this  journey 
to  South  Africa,  was  settled  after  I  had  been  four  or  five  days  a 
guest  at  Rondebosch. 

I  can  not  quite  remember  in  this  lapse  of  time  why  I  stayed  on, 
and  did  not  at  once  return.  It  was  not  for  the  sake  of  the  sump- 
tuous hospitality  and  the  really  remarkable  and  interesting  lunch- 
eons and  dinners  at  which  all  sorts  of  special  people  appeared.  I 
think  it  was  that  Rhodes  asked  me  not  to  hurry  away  as  there 
were  many  other  points  not  connected  with  Nyasaland  which  he 
wanted  to  discuss.  His  moods  were  very  variable.  Sometimes 
he  would  drive  me  out  in  a  sort  of  gig  to  Houts  Bay,  where  the 
scenery  was  lovely — bold  hills  covered  over  much  of  their  sea 
front  with  masses  of  wild,  crimson-scarlet  geraniums,  the  origin 
of  our  cultivated  plant.  We  would  draw  up  at  a  rather  English- 
looking,  old-fashioned  inn,  and  lunch  off  cold  sirloin  of  beef 
and  similar  homely  fare,  Rhodes  sulkily  reproaching  me  for  my 


THE  STORY  OF  MY  LIFE 


283 


enormous  appetite,  and  eating  very  little  himself.  He  would 
remain  in  the  hotel,  smoking  or  taking  a  nap,  whilst  I  walked 
down  to  the  sea-beach,  and  bathed  or  botanized.  Then  in  the 
afternoon  he  would  drive  me  back,  and  perhaps  have  said  nothing 
on  the  whole  excursion,  except  remarks  about  my  appetite.  Or 
on  another  day  he  would  take  me  into  Cape  Town,  to  meet  at 
lunch  the  members  of  his  cabinet,  and  a  selection  of  permanent 
officials,  and  occasionally  look  at  me  half-mockingly  at  the  sight 
of  my  amazement  at  finding  most  of  them  drunk. 

The  extent  of  drunkenness  in  South  Africa  in  those  days 
would  be  unbelievable  by  the  modern  generation.  This  vice  did 
not  extend  to  the  officials  coming  from  England — Government 
Staff,  Postmaster  General,  or  some  of  the  older  members  of 
administrations,  such  as  J.  X.  Merriman  or  Sir  Gordon  Sprigg; 
but  tipsiness  certainly  seemed  the  leading  characteristic  of  the 
Cape  Government  during  Rhodes's  tenure  of  power. 

I  never  knowingly  saw  Rhodes  inebriated,  or  saw  him  at  any 
time  or  meal  consume  any  great  amount  of  alcohol.  And  yet 
from  this  visit  in  1893,  I  derived  the  impression  of  dealing  with 
a  very  different  man  to  the  Cecil  Rhodes  of  1889 — different  in 
manner,  speech  and  appearance.  I  ascribed  the  change  in  him 
vaguely  to  drugs,  and  in  a  correspondence  I  had  with  Sir  Starr 
Jameson  shortly  after  Rhodes's  death,  he  admitted  the  possi- 
bility of  this,  but  denied  positively  that  the  change  in  his  manner, 
appearance  and  health  was  due  to  excess  of  alcohol.  Neverthe- 
less, alcohol  was  the  curse  in  the  early  'nineties  of  the  British 
South  African  Company's  men  in  South  Africa.  Their  general 
action  always  struck  me  as  a  drunken  sprawl  over  South  Central 
Africa. 

Their  Secretary  in  Cape  Town,  Dr.  Rutherfoord  Harris,  was 
very  much  of  this  type.  He  was  a  good-looking  man  with  a 
pleasant  manner,  but  according  to  Rhodes's  own  statement  in 
quite  early  days — a  rogue,  and  at  times  a  furious  inebriate. 
Jameson,  when  he  gave  up  the  medical  profession  to  become 
Rhodes's  right  hand  man,  drank  far  too  much;  though  in  the 
after  years  of  his  life,  he  may  have  been  a  model  of  temperance. 


284 


THE  STORY  OF  MY  LIFE 


From  Rondebosch,  or  rather  Cape  Town,  I  traveled  by  rail 
into  the  Orange  Free  State,  and  had  to  get  out  at  a  desolate  place 
in  the  middle  of  that  state,  and  drive  by  coach  to  Harrismith. 
It  was  a  long  and  bitterly  cold  drive,  made  additionally  miserable 
by  fleas.  I  was  packed  very  closely  between  two  exceedingly 
stout  Boers,  a  man  and  a  woman.  They  were  friendly  and  kindly, 
and  the  warmth  from  their  bodies  alone  kept  me  from  freezing, 
but  the  fleas  from  either  side  prevented  my  sleeping  through  the 
long  night  drive.  I  have  sometimes  thought  that  the  excessive 
cold  endured  in  the  Free  State  may  have  been  the  cause  of  what 
happened  a  few  days  later  in  Natal. 

A  gunboat  had  come  into  the  harbor  at  Durban,  to  fetch  me 
and  take  me  back  to  the  Zambezi.  I  had  felt  ill  from  the  time 
of  my  arrival  in  Natal.  The  last  day  of  my  stay  there  was  like 
a  nightmare.  I  could  not  believe  I  was  going  to  be  so  ill  or  under- 
stand what  had  happened  to  me.  I  had  had  much  kindness  shown 
me  in  Durban,  so  hired  a  carriage  and  felt  bound  to  drive  over 
the  town  and  its  suburbs  saying  good  bye,  although  I  have  a 
suspicion  that  I  was  delirious,  and  a  meticulous  desire  to  pay 
these  farewell  compliments  was  due  to  the  fever  which  possessed 
me.  I  had  brought  with  me  from  Nyasaland  a  Sikh  orderly; 
otherwise  my  luggage  or  myself  might  have  gone  astray.  Seeing 
how  ill  I  was  becoming,  he  countermanded  my  directions  to  the 
carriage  driver,  who  turned  his  horses  to  the  quay,  whence  I  was 
conveyed  unconscious  on  to  the  gunboat,  and  put  into  a  cot.  The 
commander  of  the  gunboat  left  at  once  for  Delagoa  Bay.  Here 
he  had  me  carried  on  shore  to  the  British  Consulate. 

His  surgeon  and  the  British  Consul  nursed  me  through  the 
crisis  of  the  fever,  which,  as  in  most  cases  of  Black-water,  soon 
arrived  and  was  soon  passed. 

Three  days  afterwards  I  was  sufficiently  recovered  to  be  taken 
out  to  the  gunboat,  and  a  day  or  two  later  saw  me  landed  at 
Chinde,  and  two  days  after  my  arrival  there  I  was  exercising  on 
the  sands  the  Basuto  ponies  which  I  had  bought  in  Natal,  and 
which  had  just  been  landed  from  a  steamer. 

Between  July,  1893,  and  May,  1894,  we  again  passed  through 


THE  STORY  OF  MY  LIFE 


285 


strenuous  times.  The  Sikh  reinforcement  arrived  from  India, 
new  officers  came  with  them,  including  the  invahiable  Captain 
Edwards.  We  landed  with  a  well-organized  force  in  1893,  on 
the  coast  of  Makanjira's  country  (Southeast  Nyasaland). 

Alfred  Sharpe,  the  Deputy  Commissioner,  was  with  me.  After 
two  days'  strenuous  fighting,  we  captured  all  the  towns  in  Makan- 
jira's country;  and  on  or  near  the  site  of  Maguire's  death,  we 
erected  a  strong  fort  which  we  named  after  him,  and  which  I 
believe  has  been  ever  since  the  capital  of  that  district.  Makanjira 
himself  was  not  to  be  found.  He  had  fled  into  the  Portuguese 
territory,  and,  I  believe,  was  killed  a  few  years  afterwards. 

From  this  point  we  crossed  the  lake  to  come  to  Jumbe's  assist- 
ance. Jumbe's  forces  had  been  driven  out  of  all  his  district  of 
Marimba,  and  were  standing  on  their  last  defence  at  Kotakota. 
His  chief  opponent  had — what  he  believed  to  be — a  very  strong 
town,  with  a  river  on  one  side,  and  a  vast  extent  of  marsh  to  the 
west.  He  considered  this  place  to  be  impregnable,  having  no 
knowledge  of  the  effect  of  even  humble  examples  of  modern 
artillery. 

Our  forces  marched  to  an  elevated  piece  of  ground  descending 
in  cliffs  to  the  bank  of  the  river,  and  situated  in  a  direct  line  not 
much  more  than  two  hundred  yards  from  the  walls  of  the  town. 
The  enemy  had  deemed  himself  completely  secure  on  his  walled 
islet  between  river  and  swamp.  We  waited  to  commence  our 
attack  until  we  had  organized  our  camp  outside  the  range  of  his 
muzzle-loading  guns  and  cannon. 

As  soon  as  everything  was  ready,  about  seven  in  the  morning, 
we  shattered  the  mud  walls  of  his  stronghold  with  shells,  and  set 
the  roofs  of  his  thatched  houses  on  fire.  Many  of  his  people  fled 
into  the  marshes  behind,  and  many  were  drowned.  There  still 
remained,  however,  the  stronghold  at  the  north  end  of  the  town, 
and  this  we  had  to  take  by  an  assault,  in  which  one  of  our  Sikhs 
was  killed.  He  had  been  the  first  to  leap  and  scramble  to  the  top 
of  the  gate  of  entrance,  and  he  fell  back  almost  on  to  my  shoul- 
ders, spurting  blood  over  the  front  of  my  jacket,  so  that  a  false 
alarm  went  out  that  I  had  been  wounded. 


286 


THE  STORY  OF  MY  LIFE 


When  we  got  inside  this  fortress  the  sight  was  terrible,  show- 
ing the  effectiveness  of  the  shell-fire.  About  seventy  men  lay 
killed  or  at  the  point  of  death.  There  were  a  number  of  slave 
women  also,  badly  wounded,  though  the  bulk  of  the  slaves  were 
found  unhurt  in  underground  refuges. 

These  two  successes  virtually  guaranteed  peace  in  southern 
Nyasaland,  and  I  resolved  to  take  no  further  risks,  until  the 
scheme  for  Indian  reinforcements  had  been  fully  carried  out. 

To  have  a  much-needed  rest,  and  to  secure  permission  to  effect 
a  better  understanding  with  the  Indian  Government  by  going  out 
to  India,  and  returning  with  reinforcements,  I  came  home  for  a 
holiday  in  the  summer  of  1894  and  produced  a  Blue  Book  on 
Nyasaland  which  made  a  small  sensation  in  the  newspapers.  It 
told  the  story  of  three  years'  work,  as  well  as  of  the  events  which 
had  led  up  to  the  establishment  of  this  Protectorate ;  and  it  was 
thoroughly  illustrated  by  colored  maps.  The  Foreign  Office  did 
the  thing  well.  The  maps  (they  were  those  which  were  published 
afterwards  with  my  book  on  British  Central  Africa)  were  artis- 
tically executed.  The  newspapers,  beginning  on  the  morrow  of 
publication  by  the  Times,  held  the  Blue  Book  up  as  a  new  event; 
foreign  governments  clamored  for  copies;  there  were  several 
reprints;  and  I  believe  H.  M.  Stationery  Office  actually  made  a 
small  profit  out  of  the  publication. 

I  designed  a  coat  of  arms  for  the  British  Central  Africa  Pro- 
tectorate in  that  summer,  and  got  it  criticized,  amended,  and 
passed  for  publication — so  to  speak — by  the  Heralds'  Office,  and 
the  Foreign  Office.  Though  in  later  days  the  title  was  changed 
to  Nyasaland,  the  coat  of  arms  otherwise  remained  pretty  much 
as  I  designed  it — a  couple  of  Negroes  with  pick  and  shovel, 
supporting  a  shield,  and  standing  on  the  continent  of  Africa,  the 
one  between  Egypt  and  Uganda  and  the  other  striding  from  Cape 
Town  to  the  Zambezi.  The  motto  was  "Light  in  Darkness"  and 
the  crest  a  coffee  tree  in  full  bearing.  For  in  those  days  we  still 
hoped  that  the  cultivation  of  coffee,  begun  in  1880  by  John 
Buchanan  and  the  African  Lakes  Company,  was  to  be  the  main 
source  of  wealth  in  Nyasaland. 


THE  STORY  OF  MY  LIFE 


287 


About  this  time  (July,  1894)  there  seemed  to  be  a  sudden 
opportunity  of  meeting  George  Du  Maurier.  I  had  long  been 
attracted  by  his  drawings  in  Punch,  from  the  late  'sixties  on- 
wards. They  seemed  to  me  to  herald  a  new  development  in  art 
and  wit.  They  were  fifty  years  ahead  of  the  primitive  humor 
and  equally  primitive  draughtsmanship  of  John  Leech.  When 
Peter  Ibbetson  was  published  early  in  1894,  it,  with  several  other 
noteworthy  books,  was  sent  out  to  me  by  that  kind  creature  Albert 
Grey — ^the  Earl  Grey  of  later  days.  When  I  came  home  in  the 
summer  of  1894  I  happened  to  mention  to  Mrs.  Douglas  Fresh- 
field  how  I  longed  to  meet  Du  Maurier.  "Why,  he's  a  great  friend 
of  ours !  If  he'll  come  anywhere  to  dinner,  he'll  come  here.  I'll 
invite  him  and  let  you  know." 

A  date  was  assigned.  I  accepted.  A  few  days  later  Mrs.  Earle 
(one  of  the  Villiers  sisters,  with  Lady  Lytton  and  Lady  Loch, 
whom  I  had  known  in  South  Africa)  wrote  asking  me  to  an  im- 
portant dinner  at  which  I  should  meet  Armine  Wodehouse,  the 
son  and  Private  Secretary  of  Lord  Kimberley,  and  some  other 
noteworthy  personages.  I  accepted  this  engagement,  knowing 
the  kindness  that  underlay  it.  Then  Mrs.  Freshfield  wrote  again 
to  say  that  Du  Maurier  was  unwell  and  she  had  had  to  postpone 
the  date  of  her  dinner.  After  several  days  more  she  sent  me  the 
date  agreed  upon.  I  telegraphed  acceptance  without  consulting 
my  engagement  book  or  I  should  have  seen  I  was  already  engaged 
to  Mrs.  Earle.  On  this  fatal  night  I  dressed  for  dinner  and  then 
looked  at  my  record  to  see  where  I  was  to  go,  feeling  sure  it  was 
to  meet  Du  Maurier.  But  instead  I  saw  Mrs.  Earle's  address. 
What  had  happened?  There  was  no  further  mention  of  the 
Freshfields  in  the  little  book.  The  one  address — Mrs.  Earle's — 
was  near  Sloane  Square;  the  other  in  Airlie  Gardens,  up  on 
Campden  Hill,  Kensington.  In  my  perplexity,  I  took  my  man- 
servant with  me,  and  when  I  had  reached  the  Earles'  house,  sent 
him  on  in  the  cab  to  Airlie  Gardens  to  enquire. 

Meantime  I  sat  down  to  dinner  at  Mrs.  Earle's.  With  the 
kindest  intentions  she  had  arranged  the  table  so  that  I  sat  next  to 
Armine  Wodehouse  and  next  but  one  to  herself.    I  forgot  my 


288  THE  STORY  OF  MY  LIFE 


doubts  and  anxieties  in  a  brave  conversation,  when  suddenly  the 
butler  or  super-butler  came  up  behind  me  and  said  in  a  low  but 
penetrating  voice:  "They're  expecting  you  to  dinner  at  Mrs. 
Freshfield's,  sir." 

I  looked  across  at  Mrs.  Earle.  Every  one  stopped  talking  and 
turned  their  eyes  on  me.  Mrs.  Earle's  gaze  became  stony.  She 
said,  "I  can't  listen  to  these  entanglements  that  Jevons  is  com- 
municating to  you.  The  Freshfields  must  continue  their  expec- 
tations. You  were  telling  us  about  Nyasaland.   Please  continue." 

But  at  last  the  active  part  of  the  dinner  was  over.  The  hostess 
rose  and  caught  the  eye  of  the  senior  lady.  The  ladies  swept 
from  the  room  with  their  long  trains,  and  as  Mrs.  Earle  paused 
to  let  the  last  precede  her  she  turned  to  me  and  said :  "Come  to 
the  drawing-room  as  soon  as  you  can.  We  are  having  a  small 
party  and  I  want  you  to  tell  again  your  stories  of  cannibalism." 

When  the  door  had  closed  on  her,  and  her  husband  had  come 
up  to  take  her  place  I  met  him  with  a  rapid  and  low-pitched  tale 
of  my  embarrassment,  and  scarcely  waiting  for  him  to  compre- 
hend or  Armine  Wodehouse  to  understand  why  I  neglected  this 
marvelous  opportunity  to  nobble  him,  I  slipped  out  of  the  room 
and  asked  for  a  hansom.  One  was  procured,  but  oh !  how  slow. 
It  seemed  to  take  a  whole  hour  to  drive  to  Campden  Hill. 

I  was  shown  in  to  the  dining-room.  The  host  and  Du  Maurier 
and  the  inconspicuous  others  were  rising  from  the  table.  Fresh- 
field  scarcely  listened  to  my  perfervid  explanation.  Du  Maurier 
turned  aside  to  examine  with  great  care  and  concentration  of  eye- 
glass the  excellent  water  colors  on  the  walls.  We  passed  on  to 
the  suite  of  drawing-rooms.  From  the  hall  came  a  cheery  chatter 
of  voices  of  guests  arriving — nine  o'clock — for  the  party  follow- 
ing on  the  dinner.  Mrs.  Freshfield  met  me  and  introduced  me  to 
Mrs.  Du  Maurier,  a  quiet  woman,  exceedingly  handsome  but 
aloof  in  manner.  Mrs.  Du  Maurier  received  the  introduction 
with  an  abstracted  gaze  and  reminded  her  hostess  how  she  had 
promised  to  take  her  husband  home  early.  Orders  were  given 
to  servants.  The  Du  Maurier  fly  was  discovered  and  Du  Maurier 
appeared  much  wrapped  up,  took  leave  of  host  and  hostess  (no 


THE  STORY  OF  MY  LIFE 


289 


note  of  me)  and  forthwith  left;  while  I,  as  atonement,  had  to 
spend  two  weary  hours  talking  to  men  and  women  who  did  not 
interest  me. 

Never  again  did  I  see  him.  He  died  when  I  was  back  in 
Africa.  And  I  have  felt  that  of  all  people  who  ever  lived  he  and 
I  should  have  been  most  congenial,  should  have  best  understood 
each  other.  Some  years  afterwards,  when  I  was  married  and 
lived  in  Chester  Terrace,  Regent's  Park,  Gerald  Du  Maurier  and 
his  wife  lived  close  by  in  some  adjunct  of  the  Terrace.  Day  after 
day  I  would  see  Gerald,  when  night  after  night  I  delighted  in  him 
on  the  stage.  But  I  lacked  the  courage  to  address  him.  I  longed 
for  him  to  trip  over  my  chow  dog,  that  I  might  break  the  ice  by 
apologizing.  But  Fate  withheld  any  incident  that  might  excuse 
my  speaking. 

Fate  was  the  more  perverse  in  that  my  wife  and  I  came  to 
make  the  acquaintance,  in  the  country,  of  that  extraordinarily 
beautiful  woman,  Du  Manner's  eldest  daughter  Sylvia,  who  had 
married  Llewellyn  Davis  and  whose  children  had  won  the  friend- 
ship of  Sir  James  Barrie.  I  met  Mrs.  Llewellyn  Davis  in  1904 
at  Rustington,  when  she  came  to  call  on  Lady  Maud  Parry  (who 
lived  next  door  to  us  in  this  Sussex  village).  It  was  a  vision  of 
entrancing  loveliness.  I  saw  her  husband  shortly  afterwards. 
He  seemed  an  ideal  husband :  young,  good-looking,  strong,  pros- 
perous, clever.  Then  a  few  years  passed  and  a  terrible  rumor 
went  round  that  he  had  had  an  unexpected  operation  for  cancer 
...  in  the  face.  .  .  .  They  were  down  at  the  sea-side,  trying 
to  forget  the  horror,  to  play  once  more  with  their  beautiful  chil- 
dren, to  listen  to  the  quaint  talk  of  their  friend  Barrie,  to  see  what 
we  had  done  to  reveal  the  history  and  associations  of  our  old 
Priory.  Llewellyn  Davis  had  to  be  served  with  tea  in  a  cup  and 
saucer  apart  from  the  set,  which  need  not  be  used  again.  He  ate 
the  strawberries  and  cream  and  the  bread  and  butter  with  diffi- 
culty. His  talk,  if  it  had  been  taken  down  by  a  shorthand 
writer,  would  have  seemed  cheerful,  but  its  tone,  the  look  in  his 
eyes  was  of  unfathomable  grief.  His  beautiful  wife's  hair  seemed 
already  to  show  threads  of  gray.    A  few  months  later  he  was 


290 


THE  STORY  OF  MY  LIFE 


dead.  Then  another  year  passed  and  she  had  followed,  a  victim 
to  the  same  dread  malady.  .   .  . 

As  to  Mrs.  Earle.  I  called  the  next  afternoon  to  apologize  for 
my  withdrawal  from  her  party,  and  tell  her  the  whole  circum- 
stances. She  said:  "After  all  the  trouble  I  took  to  get  Armine 
Wodehouse!  There  is  only  one  thing  you  can  do  to  obtain  my 
forgiveness." 

"What?" 

"I  have  put  my  son  Lionel  into  Messrs."  (I  forget  the  name) 
— "the  great  fire-engine  people.  They  want  to  extend  their  busi- 
ness— into  the  colonies,  I  mean.  You  must  want  fire-engines  in 
your  Protectorate — Nyasaland  or  whatever  you  call  it  ?  Well : 
send  Lionel  an  order  for  a  good-sized  fire-engine  and  Ell  forgive 
you !" 

So  I  perpetuated  thus  the  only  job  that  can  ever  be  attributed 
to  me :  I  ordered  a  fire-engine  for  Zomba.  It  came  out  but  I 
never  remember  it  being  used.    However  it  looked  well. 

In  the  early  autumn  of  1894  I  needed  a  rest,  so  I  started  for  a 
driving  tour  through  Switzerland,  which  was  one  of  the  most 
delightful  excursions  I  can  remember.  I  took  with  me  three  of 
my  sisters,  and  we  were  accompanied  by  Edward  Vicars,  then  a 
clerk  in  the  African  Department  of  the  Foreign  Ofiice  (nowa- 
days— H.  M.  Consul  General  in  Marseilles).  We  first  met  near 
Lintthal,  the  charming  village  in  fir-woods  on  the  northern  side 
of  the  Todi  Alp. 

Here  we  painted,  and  scrambled,  searching  for  alpine  flowers, 
up  to  the  limits  of  the  snow. 

We  visited  the  respectable  and  thoroughly  dull  town  of  Glarus 
and  then  embarked  on  the  main  episode  of  the  journey,  a  driving 
tour  which  commenced  at  Coire  in  the  Engadine.  In  a  thor- 
oughly comfortable  kind  of  brake  drawn  by  two  and  sometimes 
four  horses,  and  driven  by  one  of  the  nicest  types  of  Swiss  coach- 
men I  have  ever  met,  we  seemed  to  drive  through  Paradise;  all 
over  the  Engadine,  much  of  the  Tirol,  and  of  northern  Italy, 
back  into  Switzerland  over  the  Simplon,  and  on  to  Lausanne, 


THE  STORY  OF  MY  LIFE 


291 


Thence  we  took  train  to  Paris,  and  after  a  short  stay  there, 
returned  to  England. 

Then  began  a  multitude  of  preparations  for  the  great  effort — 
the  real  conquest  of  Nyasaland  from  the  Arabs.  For,  all  this 
time  I  realized  that  so  long  as  the  Arabs  held  North  Nyasaland 
— the  Nyasa-Tanganyika  Plateau,  and  the  Luangwa  Valley — 
with  their  forts  and  their  slave-trading  armies,  we  were  not  the 
masters  of  British  Central  Africa.  Through  our  much  lesser 
struggle  with  the  Yaos  I  had  had  to  wait  for  Rhodes's  as  well  as 
for  the  Imperial  Government's  assent  to  the  recruitment  of  a 
sufficient  force  of  Indian  soldiers  to  make  the  conquest  of  the 
North  Nyasa  Arabs  a  virtual  certainty.  So,  at  the  beginning  of 
the  nine  weeks'  frost  of  early  1895,  I  left  London  for  Paris  and 
Egypt. 

In  the  previous  autumn  I  had  renewed  the  acquaintance  of  Sir 
Herbert  Kitchener,  whom  I  had  first  met  in  1885  prior  to  his 
departure  for  Kilimanjaro.  He  had  asked  me  to  visit  him  in 
Cairo,  as  we  might  be  mutually  helpful  to  each  other.  He  did 
not  say  how,  but  not  being  quite  sure  of  the  Indian  Government's 
consent  to  my  proposals,  I  had  thought  as  an  alternative  I  might 
be  allowed  by  Kitchener  to  recruit  three  or  four  hundred  trained 
Egyptian  soldiers  for  my  Nyasaland  forces. 

I  reached  Cairo  from  Port  Said,  but  as  there  was  no  one  at  the 
station  representing  Kitchener,  I  decided  to  choose  an  hotel  for 
myself,  and  so  went  to  the  Gezireh  Palace.  Soon  after  I  arrived 
there,  the  hotel  proprietor  came  to  me  with  a  look  of  dismay  and 
said :  "There  is  some  trouble,  sir !  The  Sirdar  has  sent  a  Cor- 
poral's guard  to  take  yovi  away."  However,  it  was  only  a  rather 
saturnine  jest  on  Kitchener's  part.  I  followed  the  guard  to 
Kitchener's  house  in  Cairo.  There  we  were  received  by  a  bewil- 
dered Irish  butler,  who  put  me  into  a  poorly  furnished  spare 
room,  and  after  reflection  advised  me  to  engage  an  Egyptian 
servant  to  act  as  valet.  This  I  did,  but  as  no  meal  had  been  got 
ready  I  was  told  by  the  butler  to  repair  to  an  adjoining  club 
and  seek  for  honorary  membership,  and  a  meal. 

At  dinner  that  night,  however,  Kitchener  turned  up,  and  we 


292 


THE  STORY  OF  MY  LIFE 


had  a  rather  solemn  repast,  with  not  much  conversation.  Next 
morning,  he  asked  me  to  come  to  his  study,  and  then  introduced 
me  to  Major  (afterwards  Sir  Reginald)  Wingate,  his  Chief  of 
Staff. 

Wingate,  he  said,  would  explain  to  me  his  ideas  as  to  the  re- 
conquest  of  the  Sudan,  and  tell  me  the  points  on  which  I  ought 
to  lay  emphasis  in  my  projected  interview  with  Lord  Cromer. 
This  conversation  a  little  dismayed  me;  I  wondered  whether  he 
had  confused  British  Central  Africa  with  Uganda,  and  whether 
he  had  imagined  me  as  the  Administrator  of  the  latter  country, 
and  consequently  established  on  the  Upper  Nile.  However,  I 
went  to  see  Lord  Cromer,  not  forgetting — as  he  had  done — the 
episodes  of  our  former  meeting  in  1884. 

Lord  Cromer  was  quite  "all  there"  as  to  African  geography. 
I  told  him  frankly  of  my  intense  interest  in  "the  Cape  to  Cairo" 
scheme,  and  my  desire  to  further  it  as  much  as  I  could,  and  that 
that  was  the  reason  why  I  had  caught  at  Kitchener's  proposal 
that  I  should  see  him ;  but  that  I  realized  Kitchener  had  made  a 
mistake  as  to  my  close  association  with  the  Sudan ;  that  there  was 
all  Tanganyika  and  the  German  territory  between  us.  All  this 
Lord  Cromer  understood  and  brushed  aside,  and  we  engaged  on 
an  interesting  and  important  discussion  as  to  how  the  Sudan 
might  be  recaptured  and  afterwards  held. 

I  reported  the  results  of  the  conversation  to  Kitchener,  who 
seemed  to  me  very  different  from  the  Kitchener  I  had  met  the 
year  before,  in  England;  much  more  taciturn,  and,  as  a  host, 
extraordinarily  lacking  in  the  care  of  his  guest. 

I  joined  the  India-bound  steamer  at  Ismailia,  reached  Bombay 
and  there  was  greeted  by  Captain  Edwards,  who  though  very 
pale  and  exhausted  after  Nyasaland  fevers,  was  business-like  and 
time-saving.  After  preliminaries  at  Bombay  we  went  across 
India  to  Calcutta  to  see  the  Viceroy,  and  I  experienced  the  glories 
of  vice-regal  hospitality;  a  bedroom  which  might  have  been 
allotted  to  a  sultan,  a  sitting-room  out  of  the  Arabian  Nights, 
and  ante-chambers  and  verandas  with  exquisite  flowers.  Every 
one  had  been  prepared  for  the  discussions  and  for  the  explana- 


Above:  Mlozi,  the  chief  of  the  slave-trading  Arabs  of  North  Nvasalaiid  (1894). 
Below:   The  breach  made  in  Mlozi  s  stockade,  December  5,  1895. 


THE  STORY  OF  MY  LIFE 


293 


tions  of  the  plan  proposed,  so  there  were  little  more  than  pleasant 
formalities  to  complete.  My  eldest  sister  had  married  several 
years  previously  one  of  the  younger  men  (W.  R.  Yule)  connected 
with  shipping  interests;  he  had  been  called  into  the  discussion 
respecting  transport;  and  my  sister  gave  me  some  delightful  pic- 
nics for  seeing  the  river  scenery  and  old  Indian  towns. 

After  about  ten  days'  stay  in  this  center,  I  moved  down  to  what 
were  called  the  Central  Provinces,  somewhere  in  the  north  of  the 
Dekkan.  Here  we  had  really  tropical  scenery,  abundance  of 
palms,  a  suspicion  of  snakes  everywhere,  the  highways  thronged 
with  elephants,  and  yet  such  wise  and  cautious  elephants.  One 
might  be  driving  out  to  dinner  in  the  darkness,  and  suddenly  feel 
the  back  of  one's  head  blown  into  by  the  tip  of  an  elephant's 
trunk,  he,  of  course,  only  desirous  that  he  might  not  charge  into 
a  vehicle  on  the  road. 

From  this  place  I  went  to  Agra,  and  reveled  in  the  Saracenic 
architecture  of  the  seventeenth  century,  mainly  designed  by 
Italian  architects,  the  sumptuous  marble  palaces  of  the  Fort ;  the 
Taj -Mahal. 

Delhi  I  did  not  care  for  so  much:  the  hot  red  color  of  the 
bricks  and  stones  in  the  buildings,  the  sinister  attitude  of  the 
people,  the  abundance  and  rapacity  of  the  fleas  checked  one's 
enthusiasm. 

The  next  halt  of  any  importance  was  made  at  Lahore,  the  old 
Sikh  capital,  the  great  city  of  the  Panjab.  Here  there  was  much 
to  do  in  the  engagement  of  Sikhs  from  British  Indian  regiments. 

Our  plan,  of  course,  on  the  understanding  with  the  Indian 
Government,  was  not  the  recruitment  of  raw,  untrained  Indians 
for  service  in  Africa,  but  the  choice  of  suitable  soldiers  of  sound 
training  and  good  character  from  out  of  the  ranks  of  the  British 
Indian  Army;  and  on  this  account  not  all  English  colonels  of  the 
Indian  regirnents  were  favorable  to  our  schemes,  or  helpful  and 
time-saving  in  regard  to  recruitments.  The  Colonel  at  Jhansi 
was  a  peculiar  individual;  very  hospitable,  in  a  way;  very  inter- 
esting, for  he  had  been  born  in  India ;  but  desperately,  persecut- 
ingly  religious  on  very  Low  Church  lines,  a  strong  believer  in 


294 


THE  STORY  OF  MY  LIFE 


Hell  for  the  unorthodox,  and  absolutely  resolved  not  to  let  us 
have  a  single  Sikh  from  his  battalions.  Jhansi  was  such  an  inter- 
esting city  in  buildings  and  in  history,  that  I  enjoyed  my  fruitless 
stay  there,  until  it  became  a  question  of  not  wasting  further  time. 

In  Lahore,  apart  from  business,  there  was  much  to  be  studied 
and  much  to  be  drawn  and  painted.  Whenever  I  could  spare  the 
time,  I  used  to  start  for  the  heart  of  the  city  in  a  magnificent 
landau,  with  a  coachman  and  footman,  and  a  pair  of  fine  horses 
(which  I  hired  for  some  incredibly  small  sum — perhaps  two 
rupees  a  day),  and  draw  up  before  the  front  of  a  lovely  Persian 
mosque  in  the  middle  of  a  great  open  space,  thronged  with  sellers 
of  food  and  drink,  of  cottons,  jewelry,  and  leather  work. 

Apparently  my  landau  created  no  obstruction  to  the  traffic ;  at 
any  rate  the  greatest  good  humor  prevailed.  A  few  rupees  ofifered 
to  the  keepers  of  stalls  atoned  for  any  disturbance  I  made  in  their 
trade,  and  they  became  at  once  my  adherents  regarding  the  por- 
trayal of  the  mosque.  Besides  humans  the  square  was  full  of 
birds  and  beasts  of  that  strange  familiarity  so  characteristic  of 
India.  Horses  wandered  about  without  hindrance,  even  walking 
up  the  steps  of  the  mosque.  Large  sleepy  buffaloes  halted  here 
and  there  to  chew  the  cud,  camels  squatted  in  the  roadway ; 
pigeons  flew  in  wreathes  round  the  architecture  or  settled  on  the 
ground  to  feed. 

From  Lahore  I  went  to  Amritsar,  which  appeared  to  be  the 
center  of  the  Sikh  religion,  the  city  of  the  great  Sikh  Temple,  sur- 
rounded or  nearly  surrounded  by  water.  Here,  in  those  days 
was  a  great  emporium  of  carpets,  which  seemed  to  me  beautifully 
made,  and  of  great  taste  in  color  and  design.  They  were  also 
very  cheap,  so  I  made  considerable  purchases,  for  presents  to 
African  chiefs  and  for  use  in  my  own  house  in  Africa. 

The  Sikh  notabilities  came  to  see  me  at  Amritsar,  incited  to  do 
so  by  the  good  reports  which  had  been  received  of  me  from  the 
returned  Sikh  soldiers  in  British  Central  Africa.  Most  of  their 
leaders  spoke  excellent  English  and  were  men  of  high  education. 
They  inducted  me,  I  believe,  into  some  measure  of  Sikhdom. 
conferring  on  me  the  insignia,  tiny  models  of  those  implements  or 
weapons  which  were  associated  with  Sikh  religious  ideas. 


THE  STORY  OF  MY  LIFE 


295 


From  this  place  I  made  several  excursions  to  visit  the  returned 
soldiers  from  British  Central  Africa,  in  their  own  homes,  thus 
getting  to  see  extraordinarily  picturesque  but  very  dirty  and 
verminous  Sikh  villages.  The  men,  women,  and  children  were 
so  fine-looking,  so  handsome,  so  clean  (and  in  the  cases  of  the 
adults,  so  becomingly  dressed)  that  I  was  surprised  at  their 
humility  in  regard  to  dwellings,  and  their  tolerance  of  fleas,  bugs 
and  lice. 

The  very  peasants  seemed  to  me  gentlemen  and  ladies  in  their 
speech  and  native  courtesy.  I  had  more  or  less  learned  Hindu- 
stani in  Africa,  and  even,  after  three  years' service  with  Sikhs,  had 
picked  up  a  good  many  words  of  their  dialect  (Gurmukhi).  This 
acquisition  was  of  course  very  much  exaggerated  by  the  returned 
Sikh  soldiers,  between  whom  and  myself  had  grown  up  a  remark- 
able degree  of  friendship;  still  a  few  words  of  Gurmukhi  sup- 
plemented by  Hindustani  enabled  me  to  conduct  myself  with 
propriety  in  the  Sikh  villages,  and  in  towns  like  Amritsar. 

From  Amritsar  I  made  an  excursion  into  the  little  state  of 
Panch  (I  think  it  was  called).  It  was  to  see  the  Himalaya  close 
at  hand.  Panch  is  on  the  southern  borders  of  Kashmir,  and  here 
at  an  altitude  of  nearly  seven  thousand  feet  was  the  summer  sta- 
tion of  Dalhousie.  Here  was  a  comfortable  homely,  Swiss-like 
hotel  kept  by  a  nice  Englishwoman;  and  although  in  March  its 
proper  season  had  not  begun,  there  were  still  some  pleasant  offi- 
cers there,  either  for  health  or  surveying  purposes.  The  views 
from  the  hotel  verandas  were  sumptuous,  and  on  a  clear  day 
almost  awe-inspiring.  One  could  look  up  the  stream  valley  to  the 
peaks  of  Brama,  rising  to  over  twenty-one  thousand  feet,  and  be- 
yond them  to  other  peaks  of  an  altitude  of  twenty-three  thousand 
feet.  In  the  snowy  rock  gardens  were  groves  of  rhododendrons 
twenty  feet  in  height  with  glossy  foliage,  and  masses  of  crimson 
blossoms,  and  between  us  and  the  rhododendrons  was  a  fringe  of 
tall  peach  trees,  showing  no  leaves  but  many  sprays  of  rose-pink 
flowers.  I  do  not  think  in  all  my  life  I  have  seen  such  an  accumu- 
lation of  beauty  in  color  and  form  as  in  the  views  all  round  about 
Dalhousie,  although  no  doubt  this  is  by  no  means  the  climax  of 
wonder  and  beauty  in  Indian  scenery.  If,  from  its  precincts  one's 


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THE  STORY  OF  MY  LIFE 


gaze  extended  southwards  into  the  great  plains,  one  had  a  fore- 
ground of  a  mountain  side,  lovely  in  its  spring  flowers,  with  native 
huts  jutting  out,  their  thatched  roofs  being  on  a  level  with  the 
mountain  side  above  them.  Beyond,  there  was  a  drop  of  six  thou- 
sand feet  to  green,  gold,  brown  and  pinkish  gray  plains  with  a 
congeries  of  blue  rivers  dotted  with  white  towns. 

The  Dalhousie  excursion,  however,  was  an  extra;  I  could  not 
feel  that  I  was  doing  business  there,  so  I  had  to  return  to  work  in 
the  Panjab,  and  push  as  far  to  the  north  as  Peshawar.  I  put  up 
here  at  a  comfortable  hotel,  but  visited  much  at  the  house  of  the 
leading  official,  Mr.  Louis  Dane,  afterwards  Sir  Louis  Dane, 
famous  for  his  Afghan  negotiations. 

I  went  from  here  as  far  as  one  was  allowed  to  go  up  the  Khai- 
bar  Pass,  a  splendid  and  impressive  sight.  The  caravans  going 
up  and  coming  down  from  Central  Asia  were  intensely  interest- 
ing with  their  double-humped  camels,  their  horses,  asses  and 
mules,  the  costumes  and  facial  features  of  their  Afghan,  Tajik 
and  Mongolian  components.  I  was  accompanied  by  a  celebrated 
Anglo-Indian  official — half  an  Afghan  on  his  mother's  side — who 
was  politically  in  charge  of  the  Khaibar. 

From  Peshawar  ensued  a  wonderful  railway  journey  down  the 
valley  of  the  Indus,  and  from  Multan  a  zig-zag  railway  tour  of 
several  days  brought  me  round  Rajputana  to  Ajmir  and  Bombay. 

Here  we  hired  a  steamer  of  one  thousand  tons  belonging  to  the 
British  India  Line  for  the  conveyance  to  Zanzibar  and  the  mouth 
of  the  Zambezi  of  our  party  of  several  hundred  Sikhs,  English 
officers,  and  Indian  artisans.  I  spent  much  money  of  my  own  in 
an  attempt  to  introduce  Indian  buffalo,  sheep,  goats,  pea-fowl, 
Chinese  geese,  ducks,  turkeys,  blossom-headed  and  ring-necked 
parrakeets  into  Africa.  Such  animals  in  those  days  could  be  pur- 
chased in  India  at  absurdly  low  rates;  but  none  of  these  intro- 
ductions was  able  to  stand  for  long  the  African  climate — or,  in 
reality,  the  African  germ  diseases,  which  killed  most  of  them. 
The  pea-fowl  cost  me  so  little  that  I  must  have  bought  about 
eighteen,  but  they  had  evidently  been  recently  in  a  wild  state. 
They  seemed  quite  untamable.  Midway  across  the  ocean,  as  they 
were  falling  ill  with  confinement  in  cages,  I  gave  them  their 


THE  STORY  OF  MY  LIFE 


297 


liberty  on  the  ship,  whereupon  quite  a  dozen  of  them  rose  into  the 
air  with  a  despairing  clamor,  and  flew  northwestward,  without 
the  faintest  hope,  I  feared,  of  their  ever  reaching  any  land.  The 
others  were  recaptured  and  conveyed  to  Zomba.  There,  they 
took  refuge  in  the  jungle  and  were  never  seen  again. 

One  of  my  projects  in  purchasing  buffalo  was  the  hope  that 
the  cows  might  serve  as  mothers  to  the  African  buffalo  calves 
that  we  were  frequently  capturing,  and  thus  bring  about  their 
domestication.  But,  although  they  proved  docile  as  mothers, 
they  died  in  a  few  months  from  tsetse-fly  attacks. 

Livingstone,  of  course,  had  had  the  same  ideas  in  the  'sixties, 
and  had  similarly  failed  to  establish  the  Indian  buffalo  in  East 
Africa.  I  can  not  help  feeling,  however,  that  this  introduction 
may  be  effected  some  day  with  success.  Hundreds  of  years  ago 
the  Indian  buffalo  was  introduced  into  the  eastern  Mediterranean 
countries,  notably  Italy  and  Egypt.  In  Egypt  they  are  to  be  seen 
in  the  Nile  Valley  between  Alexandria  and  Khartum.  Perhaps 
this  naturalized  form  might  be  more  suited  for  introduction  into 
Central  Africa  than  the  Indian  or  Malayan  races. 

No  hitch,  loss  or  disagreeable  incident  occurred,  except  the 
flight  of  the  pea-fowl,  between  leaving  Bombay,  arriving  at 
Chinde  and  disembarking  on  British  territory  at  Chiromo,  the 
confluence  of  the  Ruo  and  Shire. 

This  was  partly  due  to  the  extraordinary  efificiency  of  Major 
(as  he  had  just  been  made  in  reward  for  his  former  services)  C. 
A.  Edwards  and  of  the  other  British  Indian  Staff  Corps  officers. 
I  conceived  at  that  time,  an  opinion,  never  since  shaken,  that  the 
training  given  to  the  British  officers  in  Indian  regiments,  creates 
an  exceptionally  able  body  of  men.  They  are  all  speakers  of  one, 
two,  or  three  Indian  languages  in  addition  to  English;  many  of 
them  have  mastered  French,  Russian,  Persian  or  Arabic,  being 
encouraged  to  do  so  by  additions  to  their  salary.  They  thoroughly 
understand  the  importance  of  the  right  rations  for  their  troops 
and  the  general  care  of  their  men.  Throughout  all  my  survey 
and  experience  of  the  worldj  I  have  never  met  their  superiors  in 
education,  bravery,  or  zeal. 


CHAPTER  XIII 


On  our  arrival  at  Chiromo,  we  were  told  of  a  recent  outbreak 
of  trouble  in  the  disturbed  mountain  district  of  Mlanje.  It  was 
said  that  raiding  on  the  part  of  two  Yao  chiefs,  one  of  them 
named  Matipwiri,  had  recommenced.  Amongst  the  complainants 
were  two  Portuguese  (or  French  Catholic)  missionaries  who  had 
been  established  at  Matipwiri's  town  by  the  Portuguese  authori- 
ties. Matipwiri  had  attacked  their  station  and  wrecked  their 
chapel,  plundering  it  of  Communion  vessels,  and  anything  worth 
taking. 

This  man  had  been  a  constant  source  of  anxiety  and  trouble 
for  the  previous  ten  years,  so  I  resolved  now  to  deal  with  him 
effectually.  Nearly  all  his  territory  lay  on  the  British  side  of  the 
boundary,  though  his  chief  town  was  supposed  to  be  under  the 
Portuguese. 

With  Major  Edwards's  help,  I  organized  and  set  on  foot  a 
strong  expedition  which  I  accompanied.  We  marched  up  the 
Ruo  bank,  day  and  night,  with  only  occasional  rests  of  an  hour 
or  two,  and  took  Matipwiri  completely  by  surprise,  capturing  one 
after  another  of  his  towns.  The  chief  himself  was  eventually 
surrendered  by  his  subjects  or  by  the  Portuguese ;  at  any  rate  I 
never  heard  of  him  again,  and  after  his  imprisonment  he  may 
have  settled  down. 

From  Mlanje,  after  re-constituting  its  administration  and 
establishing  two  more  forts,  I  regained  Zomba,  and  relieved  Mr. 
Sharpe,  who  went  rather  reluctantly  on  a  much  needed  holiday, 
reluctantly  because  he  felt  we  were  now  undertaking  the  final 
conquest  of  Nyasaland. 

I  had  a  good  deal  of  administrative  work  to  tackle  and  finish, 
but  Major  Edwards  meantime  was  preparing  the  great  expedi- 
tion, which  was  to  finish  with  the  North  Nyasa  Arabs,  and  the 
Southeast  Nyasa  Yaos. 

298 


THE  STORY  OF  MY  LIFE 


299 


We  had,  by  this  time,  two  gunboats  on  Lake  Nyasa,  a  portion 
of  the  British  Navy,  run  by  Naval  officers  and  crews;  but  these 
boats  were  not  in  reality  of  much  use.  The  English  firm  that 
designed  them  could  not  get  it  out  of  its  head  that  Lake  Nyasa 
was  very  like  the  Thames,  even  if  a  little  broader.  Their  capacity 
as  transports  was  poor,  either  for  cargo  or  passengers.  Outside 
the  two  gunboats  I  had  two  steamers  of  the  African  Lakes  Com- 
pany to  rely  on.  One  of  these,  the  Domira,  was  of  fair  capacity, 
and  figured  almost  sensationally  in  all  our  lake  and  river  wars. 
The  other,  the  Ilala,  was  little  more  than  a  steam  launch.  Then 
there  was  the  famous  Charles  Janson  belonging  to  the  Universi- 
ties' Mission;  but  although  this  had  often  been  placed  at  my 
disposal  for  pacific  work,  it  was  out  of  the  question  using  it  for 
war  purposes. 

I  felt  that  if  I  could  only  transport  in  one  voyage  half  of  my 
expedition  against  the  North  Nyasa  Arabs  I  might  incite  them  to 
strike  at  the  African  Lakes  Company  and  the  missionaries  before 
we  could  return  with  the  completed  party.  There  was  only  one 
way  to  effect  the  sudden  and  speedy  landing  of  our  four  hundred 
Indian  and  African  soldiers  and  some  fifteen  officers,  and  that 
was  to  ask  the  Germans  to  lend  us  their  fine  new  steamer  Wiss- 
mann.  Of  course,  in  proffering  this  request  I  had  to  reveal  my 
purpose  and  if  the  Germans  were  traitors,  they  might  have  fore- 
warned Mlozi,  the  chief  of  the  North  Nyasa  Arabs;  but  ever 
since  Colonel  Hermann  von  Wissmann  came  to  the  lake  in  1892, 
the  German  attitude  there  had  been  wholly  on  our  side.  My 
request  for  the  use  of  the  Wissmann  steamer  was  no  sooner  put 
to  Captain  Benidt,  than  it  was  granted,  and  on  further  reference 
for  confirmation  to  the  German  commandant  at  the  north  end  of 
the  lake,  not  only  was  it  confirmed,  but  the  Wissmann  and  its 
officers  were  actually  to  be  "under  my  orders"  for  the  term  of  a 
month. 

Thus,  with  this  little  fleet,  the  whole  of  my  expedition,  amount- 
ing in  all  to  nearly  five  hundred  men,  black,  white,  and  yellow, 
was  conveyed  swiftly  and  landed  suddenly  at  Karonga,  taking 
every  one  there  by  surprise.    My  ultimatum  was  despatched  to 


300 


THE  STORY  OF  MY  LIFE 


Mlozi,  but  fearing  to  give  him  any  time  for  preparations,  the 
whole  expedition  started  a  few  hours  afterwards,  and  was  en- 
camped at  a  distance  of  half  a  mile  outside  Mlozi's  fortress  only- 
two  or  three  hours  after  the  letter  reached  him. 

From  our  camp  I  sent  two  messengers  with  loud  voices  to  the 
limit  of  Arab  gun-shot,  to  repeat  the  summons  to  an  immediate 
conference.  No  answer  was  delivered.  The  Arabs,  however, 
began  firing  from  their  walls.  Our  two  field-glasses  mounted  on 
ant-hills  gave  us  an  intimate  view  of  Mlozi's  defences.  The 
whole  of  his  large  town  was  surrounded  by  what  seemed  a  pretty 
solid  red  clay  wall,  which  turned  out  to  be  a  double  wall,  its  upper 
story  consisting  of  a  continuous  circular  range  of  dwellings, 
between  the  two  walls,  roofed  at  the  top  with  a  thatch. 

Torrential  rain  began  to  descend,  which  soon  put  out  the  fires 
inside  the  town  started  by  our  incendiary  shells.  For  two  days 
the  rain  scarcely  ceased.  The  miserable  liutlet,  in  which  I  had 
my  abode,  became  inundated.  Major  Edwards  had  already  devel- 
oped Black-water  fever.  On  the  third  day  the  rain  ceased,  and 
a  flag  of  truce  was  over  the  town.  I  gathered  that  Mlozi  himself 
was  coming  to  meet  me  to  discuss  terms,  but  I  was  warned  by  one 
of  our  Swahili  spies  to  be  very  careful,  as  Mlozi  was  said  to  have 
a  device  for  seizing  me  in  a  sudden  rush  and  carrying  me  off  to 
his  citadel  as  a  hostage. 

The  North  Nyasa  natives  who  had  turned  out  about  a  thousand 
porters  to  convey  our  war  material  and  other  loads  from  the  coast 
of  Nyasa  to  our  camp  outside  Mlozi's  town  (a  distance  of  twelve 
miles)  told  us  that  seventy  chiefs  of  their  tribes  had  been  seized 
by  the  Arabs  and  brought  into  the  town  to  be  held  as  hostages.  I 
therefore  halted  in  my  advance  to  the  walls,  just  at  the  approxi- 
mate gun-shot  limit,  and  had  my  message  shouted  to  Mlozi,  who 
himself,  had  halted  at  about  a  hundred  feet  distant  just  under  the 
walls.  Nothing  resulted.  He  declined  to  come  nearer.  I  refused 
to  come  within  gun-shot.  He  returned  to  within  the  fort,  and  the 
Arabs  started  firing,  but  fortunately  their  aim  or  the  distance 
made  them  harmless. 

The  siege  was  renewed.   One  of  our  officers,  Mr.  Walter  Gor- 


THE  STORY  OF  MY  LIFE 


301 


don  Gumming,  had  established  a  camp  of  native  auxiharies  on  the 
opposite  side  of  Mlozi's  town ;  and  joining  him,  I  made  a  circuit 
of  the  whole  place,  keeping  naturally  out  of  the  Arab  gun  range. 

At  last,  on  the  fifth  day,  hearing  rumors  of  an  advance  from 
the  south  of  an  Arab  relieving  force,  we  decided  to  finish  the 
business  by  assaulting  the  town  through  the  breach  our  artillery 
was  to  make  in  the  double  walls.  We  began  by  shelling  vigor- 
ously a  portion  of  the  town  where  Mlozi  was  reputed  to  dwell  in 
an  Arab  house  of  stone.  Then  we  attacked  the  stockade  on  its 
eastern  side  with  the  whole  of  our  force.  After  we  had  breached 
the  walls  and  were  on  the  point  of  entering,  we  were  almost  over- 
whelmed by  an  enormous  surge  of  the  besieged  Arabs,  their 
native  soldiers  and  slaves.  The  rush  was  so  great  and  desperate 
that  it  not  only  checked  our  assault,  but  held  us  up.  The  Sikh 
soldiers  or  their  officers  took  it  to  be  an  assault  in  force,  and  their 
men  lay  on  the  ground  while  the  officers  in  standing  up  were 
almost  overwhelmed  by  the  fugitives  (as  they  turned  out  to  be). 

They  were  shouting  the  cry  of  surrender  "Aman!  Aman!"  but 
some  of  them  remained  armed,  and  we  had  to  shout  to  them  to 
surrender  their  arms  or  they  would  be  shot.  One  Arab  made 
straight  for  me,  not  dropping  his  gun,  and  I  had  to  shoot  him 
through  the  head  with  my  revolver,  as  he  seemed  all  "berserkr," 
distraught  either  with  panic  or  war  fury.  Hundreds  of  fugitives, 
however,  were  making  for  our  camp,  which  practically  had  no 
defences,  as  we  were  throwing  the  whole  of  our  forces  on  the 
attack.  However,  we  could  not  turn  back  to  see  what  they  were 
doing,  and  as  a  matter  of  fact  they  were  surrendering  to  the  few 
of  our  servants  and  camp  followers  who  were  left  behind. 

We  broke  through  the  shattered  walls  and  entered  the  town, 
deserted  of  inhabitants  except  here  and  there  for  some  aged  man 
or  woman,  some  cripple  or  idiot;  but  in  all  directions  we  saw 
horrible  sights  of  sixty  or  seventy  headmen  or  chiefs  of  the 
North  Nyasa  tribes  barbarously  slain. 

A  hasty  examination  of  the  place  revealed  no  sign  of  Mlozi  or 
other  Arabs. 

All  this  time  it  had  been  raining  in  torrents,  but  now  the  sky 


302 


THE  STORY  OF  MY  LIFE 


cleared,  and  for  the  first  time  in  several  days  we  had  bright  sun- 
shine. Rather  dejected,  I  made  my  way  back  to  the  camp,  had  a 
bath  and  a  meal,  and  then  as  I  saw  the  officers,  one  by  one, 
straggling  back  for  the  same  purpose — some  of  them  wounded— 
I  called  a  council.  The  one  question  we  put,  each  to  the  other, 
was  "What  had  become  of  Mlozi  ?"  Victory  was  less  than  half 
victory  without  some  solution  of  this  problem. 

There  were  numerous  Arab  prisoners  in  and  around  the  camp 
or  having  their  wounds  dressed  by  the  surgeon. 

There  was  no  immediate  answer  to  the  question  and  with 
gloomy  faces  we  squatted  down  to  eat  a  meal  and  exchange  ques- 
tion and  answer. 

Presently  from  a  distance  began  a  faint  cheering  clamor,  which 
soon  rose  to  a  deafening  babble.  The  invaluable  Atonga  sergeant, 
Bandawe,^  with  a  few  other  Atonga  soldiers,  was  seen  guarding  a 
litter  borne  by  native  porters,  and  coming  across  to  our  camp 
from  the  smoking  walls  of  the  town. 

The  cry  went  up  that  this  was  Mlozi  being  brought  in  wounded. 
I  realized  the  story  to  be  true  as  I  advanced  to  meet  the  little 
procession,  and  recognized  Mlozi's  features. 

His  eyes  met  mine  without  flinching,  though  he  was  evidently 
suffering  a  great  deal  of  pain  from  some  severe  wound.  He  was 
handed  over  to  the  surgeon — Dr.  Wordsworth  •  Poole — to  have 

1  Bandawe,  an  Atonga  of  the  West  Nyasa  district  was  originally  a  Mission 
boy  of  Dr.  Law's  teaching.  He  learned  to  play  the  harmonium  quite  well ; 
and  after  one  or  other  of  our  victories  on  Nyasa  used  to  make  for  the 
nearest  Mission  station  with  some  of  his  men,  and  slinging  his  rifle  at  his 
back  would  sit  down  and  play  and  sing  hymns  of  triumph.  I  should  like 
to  think  that  this  man,  invaluable  as  an  intelligence  officer,  honest  and 
trustworthy,  unfalteringly  brave,  who  counted  for  much  in  the  establishment 
of  British  rule  over  Nyasaland  finally  retired  from  our  armed  forces  there 
on  a  sufficient  pension;  but  I  have  never  been  able  to  ascertain  that  he  did. 

Another  "native"  character  in  these  wars  of  Nyasaland  who  had  traveled 
with  me  to  Kilimanjaro  in  1884,  and  who  accompanied  me  throughout  my 
Uganda  journeys  and  negotiations  in  1899-1901,  was  AH  Kiongwe,  often 
referred  to  in  the  preceding  pages.  He  was  really  invaluable  during  the 
seven  years  from  1889  to  1896,  for  obtaining  information  about  the  Arabs 
or  Yaos.  He  was  a  Swahili  Negro,  born  in  some  village  on  the  mainland 
opposite  Zanzibar,  who  had  first  been  employed  as  a  porter  by  the  Church 
Missionary  Society  and  the  Universities'  Mission.  He  was  recommended 
to  me  as  a  headman  by  the  celebrated  Sparkes  in  1884.  He  was  eventually 
awarded  a  small  pension  by  the  British  Government  and  a  Zanzibar  decora- 
tion by  the  Sultan  of  that  land.    He  lost  his  sight  and  died  about  1912. 


THE  STORY  OF  MY  LIFE 


303 


his  injuries  examined.  Then  Bandawe  was  called  upon  for  an 
explanation. 

He  had  entered  the  town  with  the  general  rush  of  the  troops, 
but  having  been  there  before  as  a  boy,  he  knew  more  or  less  the 
site  of  Mlozi's  house.  With  a  few  armed  Atonga  he  entered  it 
very  quietly.  It  seemed  utterly  deserted,  but  after  a  wait  of 
about  an  hour,  when  the  clamor  of  the  invading  forces  had  died 
down,  his  attention  was  aroused  by  some  slight  noise.  He  saw  a 
large  wooden  shutter  which  had  been  part  of  the  floor  being 
pushed  on  one  side,  and  a  man's  arm  coming  up  to  clutch  at  some 
support.  With  a  shout  to  his  few  men  he  flung  himself  on  the 
arm,  pushed  away  the  board,  seized  a  throat  and  half  strangled 
its  owner,  and  with  his  five  or  six  Atonga  found  himself  in  an 
underground  chamber.  Here  on  some  kind  of  a  bed  lay  Mlozi, 
partly  incapacitated  by  a  gunshot  wound.  Bandawe,  in  the  sin- 
cerest  accents  made  it  clear  that  any  resistance  would  be  immedi- 
ately followed  by  death,  and  presently  he  got  Mlozi  lifted  up  on 
to  the  upper  floor,  and  so  brought  him  out  of  the  building  and 
the  town. 

About  half  the  little  army  squatted  for  the  night  round  about 
the  hut  where  Mlozi  was  imprisoned.  I  was  so  exhausted  with 
fatigue  that  I  must  have  slept  about  ten  hours,  without  a  break. 
However,  soon  after  waking  and  dressing,  I  received  all  the  news 
that  could  be  collected  by  our  scouts  and  spies.  Those  of  them 
headed  by  Ali  Kiongwe  who  had  penetrated  some  distance  to  the 
south,  asserted  that  a  large  force  of  Arabs  was  steadily  marching 
northwards  and  might  be  in  a  position  to  attack  us  in  three  days' 
time;  so  I  felt  that  the  settlement  with  Mlozi,  so  long  deferred, 
must  be  hastened.  I  put  him  on  his  trial  for  one  of  the  many 
counts  against  him:  the  murder  of  seventy  native  hostages  in 
his  fort. 

Arabs  amongst  the  prisoners  testified  that  the  massacre  of 
these  men  was  due  to  a  direct  order  from  Mlozi,  so  Mlozi  was 
sentenced  to  death.  He  declined  to  say  anything  whatever  in  his 
own  defence.  For  the  twenty-four  hours  during  which  he  was 
in  our  keeping,  I  do  not  remember  his  uttering  a  word,  or  making 
any  remark.  Having  been  told  of  the  sentence,  he  was  given  two 


304 


THE  STORY  OF  MY  LIFE 


hours  in  which  to  prepare  himself,  and  an  Arab  amongst  his  for- 
mer followers,  who  seemed  to  be  a  religious  person,  was  set  apart 
to  pray  with  him.  And  then,  at  sunset,  he  was  hanged. 

We  felt,  at  any  rate,  the  next  day,  that  though  things  might 
go  hard  with  us  in  the  event  of  another  Arab  attack,  we  had  dis- 
posed for  ever  of  our  chief  and  worst  enemy.  On  the  morrow 
nothing  very  much  happened,  and  most  of  the. Europeans,  when 
not  on  guard,  slept  in  the  tents  we  were  now  able  to  put  up. 

The  day  after,  the  rumors  of  the  advancing  Arabs  became 
more  definite,  but  I  had  decided  to  receive  them  here,  now  we 
had  had  time  to  arrange  our  forces  and  establish  defences  to  our 
camp.  But  when  the}^  appeared,  they  came  not  as  enemies  but  as 
suppliants,  declaring  themselves  not  to  be  slave-traders,  but  to 
have  honestly  purchased  ivory  and  other  trade  goods  at  their 
principal  camp,  about  forty  miles  away.  In  short — it  was  peace. 
From  that  time  onward,  I  believe,  we  never  again  had  to  fire  at 
an  Arab. 

On  the  last  day  of  my  stay  in  the  camp,  however,  I  began  to 
feel  terribly  ill,  and  at  Karonga,  whither  I  was  transported  in  a 
hammock,  I  found  myself  to  be  suffering  from  Black-water  fever. 
Major  Edwards,  who  had  been  crippled  by  that  disease  a  few 
days  prior  to  the  fighting,  had  quite  recovered,  and  constituted 
himself  my  chief  nurse.  I  was  put  on  board  the  German  steamer, 
and  carried  away  in  her  with  great  speed  to  the  south  end  of  Lake 
Nyasa,  and  down  the  River  Shire  to  Liwonde's  town,  where  we 
had  made  a  fairly  comfortable  station.  Here,  I  got  over  the 
worst  of  the  disease,  and  was  carried  with  great  care  to  the 
Zomba  Mountains.  I  stayed  for  a  while  at  the  Church  of  Scot- 
land Mission  Station  at  Dombasi,  and  thence  regained  my  much 
loved  home  at  Zomba,  able  at  last  to  send  by  Rhodes's  telegraph 
line  a  cable  to  Lord  Salisbury,  announcing  the  end  of  the  Arab 
War. 

The  return  cablegram  reached  me  a  day  or  two  afterwards  con- 
ferring on  me  the  K.  C.  B.  The  telegraph  line  which  had  just 
been  constructed  across  Portuguese  Zambezia  to  Blantyre  and 
Zomba,  also  brought  me  the  staggering  news  of  the  Jameson 


THE  STORY  OF  MY  LIFE 


305 


raid,  and  then  ceased  to  function,  either  because  of  an  accident  to 
the  wires,  or  because  some  enemy  had  cut  the  communication. 

Curiously  enough,  the  first  whiff  of  rumor  concerning  Jame- 
son's action  came  not  by  telegram,  but  by  a  native  report,  show- 
ing how  fast  news  could  in  those  days  be  carried  from  one  native 
tribe  to  another.  Native  opinion  in  those  days  was  always  anti- 
Boer  and  pro-British,  and  the  first  rumor  was  optimistic,  presag- 
ing Jameson's  success. 

Unfortunately,  the  exhilarating  cable  announcing  my  K.  C.  B. 
was  followed  by  a  mail  from  India  bringing  the  news  of  the  death 
in  child-birth  of  my  eldest  sister,  to  whom  I  had  been  much 
attached,  and  this  piece  of  news  coming  to  me  in  an  enfeebled 
state  nearly  finished  me.  I  was  only  brought  back  to  conva- 
lescence by  the  devoted  nursing  of  my  Sikh  orderly  and  my 
Persian  steward,  Hajji  Askar. 

February,  1896,  found  me  quite  recovered,  endowed  with  so 
much  vigor  that  I  seemed  untirable.  It  was  my  last  stay — I  felt 
— in  British  Central  Africa,  and  I  had  much  to  do  in  the  way  of 
painting  and  photography,  and  the  writing  down  of  languages,  to 
complete  the  studies  I  was  going  to  embody  in  a  book.  I  stayed 
at  Zomba,  working  almost  twelve  hours  a  day,  till  Mr.  Sharpe 
rejoined  me  from  a  holiday  in  England.  Then,  in  May,  1896,  I 
set  out  for  home. 

When  I  reached  Zanzibar,  I  received  by  cable  the  news  of  my 
father's  death.    He  had  died  on  the  verge  of  seventy-six. 

Soon  after  reaching  London  I  was  directed  to  proceed  to 

Windsor  to  be  knighted  by  the  Queen,  and  be  given  by  her  the 

K.  C.  B.  which  she  had  conferred  on  me  at  the  beginning  of  1896. 

This  meant,  of  course,  donning  my  uniform  and  proceeding  to 

Paddington  to  place  myself  under  the  direction  of  Sir  Albert 

Woods  of  the  Heralds'  Of?ice.^  I  had  the  happy  accident  at  Pad- 

*  I  had  made  the  acquaintance  of  Sir  Albert  Woods  over  by  C.  B.  in  1890, 
and  he  had  subsequently  afforded  me  help  in  regard  to  designing  the  Heraldic 
device  of  British  Central  Africa.  He  was  most  kindly  and  informative  in 
ever\'thing:  to  do  with  coats-of-arms  and  heraldry,  but  I  was  rather  surprised 
to  find  him  very  uncertain  about  his  h's.  He  did  not  seem  to  care  whether 
he  stuck  them  on  or  took  them  off.  Yet  he  had  been  born — so  to  speak — 
in  the  Heralds.'  Office  where  he  succeeded  his  father. 


306 


THE  STORY  OF  MY  LIFE 


dington  Station  of  meeting  Lady  Lytton  and  Lady  Loch,  and 
traveling  down  with  them  to  Windsor.  I  think  Lady  Lytton  by 
then  was  a  widow,  and  had  been  given  a  place  at  Court. 

Not  long  after  reaching  Windsor  Castle,  I  was  admitted  to  the 
Queen's  presence.  The  Duke  of  Connaught  was  standing  by  her 
to  assist  in  presenting  the  candidates  for  decorations.  The 
Queen  was  seated  on  a  small  throne  or  a  high  chair  in  a  very  tiny 
cabinet,  one,  I  think,  associated  with  Queen  Anne.  She  held  a 
bare  sword  in  her  hand.  I  knelt  and  was  lightly  tapped  with  the 
accolade.  Unfortunately  the  Duke  of  Connaught  had  become 
mixed  in  his  account  of  the  candidates  for  various  distinctions,  so 
that  he  confused  me  with  some  military  ofificer,  who  had  been 
severely  wounded  in  India  or  the  Sudan,  and  the  Queen  looked 
at  me  with  lack-lustre  eyes  and  down-drooping  mouth,  displaying 
little  or  no  interest. 

I  did  not  know  what  to  do,  and  feared  that  something  unto- 
ward might  occur  if  I  corrected  the  Prince  in  the  Queen's  pres- 
ence and  reclaimed  my  proper  personality ;  so  I  had  to  listen  to  a 
fev^  words  of  chilly  condolence  with  regard  to  the  non-existent 
wound,  which,  as  the  Queen  said,  with  a  flicker  of  recognition, 
seemed  to  have  left  no  trace  in  my  appearance  or  my  alertness — 
and  then  at  the  given  signal  withdraw  from  the  royal  presence. 

This  was  the  more  disappointing  to  me  because  from  1889 
onwards.  Queen  Victoria  had  taken  such  a  real  personal  interest 
in  the  efforts  to  put  down  the  Slave  Trade  in  Nyasaland,  and 
make  it  a  British  Protectorate. 

Through  Sir  Henry  Ponsonby  she  had  made  enquiries  as  to 
the  success  of  coffee  planting,  and  had  acknowledged  in  unusu- 
ally gracious  terms  the  gift  of  a  consignment  of  coffee  from  the 
Shire  Highlands  plantations.  She  had  signed  letters  written  both 
in  Swahili  and  in  English  which  I  had  submitted  to  her,  for  sub- 
sequent delivery  to  the  friendly  Arabs  like  Jumbe  of  Kotakota, 
had  sent  them  the  presents  I  had  recommended,^  and  in  fact,  done 
everything  that  she  could  to  back  up  my  efforts. 

1  In  1890,  I  had  told  the  Queen,  through  Sir  Henry  Ponsonby,  of  Jumbe 
of  Kotakota  (the  old  Arab  chief  of  S.  W.  Nyasaland),  of  his  effectively 


THE  STORY  OF  MY  LIFE 


307 


Much  of  this  intervention  was  no  doubt  due  to  the  advice  of 
Sir  Henry  Ponsonby  or  of  Lord  Salisbury;  still  there  was  evi- 
dence of  a  personal  interest  on  her  part,  connected,  I  was  told, 
with  the  work  of  Livingstone  in  that  direction. 

I  looked  forward  therefore  to  being  questioned  on  the  events 
of  Nyasaland;  but  as  I  was  introduced  to  her  only  as  an  officer 
who  had  been  wounded  in  some  Indian  or  African  war,  she  prob- 
ably never  realized  when  I  knelt  before  her  that  I  was  connected 
with  the  finishing  of  Livingstone's  work. 

After  lunch,  at  the  Castle,  I  was  shown  the  extraordinarily 
interesting  collection  of  royal  miniatures  in  the  Library,  which 
had  recently  been  arranged  under  the  Queen's  directions.^  Later 
on,  in  King  Edward's  reign,  I  went  to  see  them  again  to  make  a 
more  detailed  examination.  They  commenced,  if  I  remember 
rightly,  with  the  Portrait  of  Richard  the  Second.  There  was  a 
very  striking  miniature  of  Henry  Fitzroy,  Duke  of  Richmond,  an 
illegitimate  son  of  Henry  viii.,  born  in  1519,  who  lived  to  be 

kind  reception,  the  interest  he  took  in  her,  and  his  respect  for  the  memory 
of  Livingstone.  The  result  was  that  the  Queen  intimated  her  desire  to 
send  him  a  handsome  present  in  return  for  his  tusks  of  ivory  (which  used 
to  be  exhibited  at  Windsor  Castle).  I  advised,  among  other  things,  his 
being  sent  a  full  toilet  service,  to  be  made  for  him  at  the  potteries,  and 
inscribed,  here  and  there,  with  the  Royal  initials — V.  R.  I.  The  Queen  inti- 
mated her  approval,  and  I  went  down  to  Hanley  or  some  such  place  among 
the  Five  towns  and  superintended  the  finish  of  these  inscriptions,  besides 
choosing  the  general  pattern,  coloring  and  styles.  When,  some  years  after- 
wards, I  made  the  solemn  presentation  to  Jumbe  there  was  one  awkward 
moment  at  the  close  of  the  unpacking  of  this  splendid  toilet  service.  In 
the  array  set  forth  on  his  great  veranda  were  two  vessels  not  specially 
ordered  by  me,  but  supplied  almost  mechanically  in  those  days  with  any 
complete  toilet  service.  "And  what  are  these  for?"  said  the  delighted  old 
man:  and  then  himself  supplying  the  answer:  "/  know!  One  for  rice,  the 
other  for  curry."  And  to  that  honorable  function  they  were  apportioned 
in  the  meal  that  followed. 

^  I  did  not  realize  till  I  saw  this  collection  and  much  else  illustrative  of 
British  history  in  Windsor  Castle,  how  spiteful  Fate  had  shown  itself 
towards  the  Stuart  dynasty  in  balking  its  succession  through  legitimate 
children.  James  II.  had  not  less  than  eight  children — the  first  four  being 
boys,  created  Duke  of  This  and  That — born  in  England  of  his  first  wife, 
the  Lady  Anne  Hyde,  and  seven  by  the  second  wife,  Mary  of  Modena, 
fifteen  in  all.  Queen  Anne,  James's  second  daughter,  had  five  children,  but 
not  one  lived  to  succeed  his  mother.  Mr.  Holmes,  the  Librarian  of  Windsor 
Castle,  had  assisted  Queen  Victoria  to  get  together  this  superb  collection 
of  portraits,  the  earliest  of  which — I  think — was  a  miniature  of  Richard  II. 


308 


THE  STORY  OF  MY  LIFE 


eighteen  years  of  age  and  whose  death  did  more  than  anything 
else  to  drive  Henry  to  wild  courses.  They  included  interesting 
portraits  of  some  royal  connections  of  Queen  Elizabeth  and  the 
last  of  the  Tudors. 

From  the  beginning  of  the  seventeenth  century  they  became 
more  numerous.  It  was  really  a  feast  of  history,  a  good  deal  of 
w^hich  did  not  seem  to  have  been  written,  or  if  written  had  not 
been  published. 

The  Queen  had  been  in  no  way  fastidious,  and  had  sought  for 
genuine  portraits  of  the  illegitimate  as  well  as  the  legitimate  con- 
nections of  the  British  dynasty.  Some  of  her  purchases  had  been 
made  in  Italy  during  the  'eighties.  I  have  heard  nothing  more 
of  this  wonderful  collection  since  the  death  of  King  Edward 
but  I  presume  it  is  still  in  the  Library  at  Windsor.  One  would 
wish  that  it  could  be  reproduced  by  photography  and  published 
as  a  contribution  to  history.  Many  of  the  people  therein  illus- 
trated were  only  known  to  me  by  name  hitherto.  It  made  all  the 
difference  to  realize  what  they  looked  like  in  real  life,  and  I 
respected  the  Queen's  boldness  in  facing  old  scandals,  so  as  to 
enrich  histor}^ 

My  visit  to  Windsor  occasioned  an  unfortunate  misunder- 
standing with  Edmund  Gosse.  I  knew  more  about  him  in  those 
days  than  he  did  about  me,  because  in  my  boyhood  I  had  been 
trained  to  read  the  writings  of  his  father,  an  official  in  Jamaica; 
who  had,  unfortunately,  combined  an  extraordinary  interest  in 
Natural  History  with  a  maddening  degree  of  piety.  His  writings 
had  been  approved  by  my  parents,  and  I  had  been  led  through 
them,  snatching  eagerly  at  the  information  they  yielded  on  West 
Indian  biology,  or  the  guesses  they  made  as  to  the  African  fauna, 
but  irritated  over  their  evangelical  gush. 

I  did  not,  until  after  I  had  visited  Jamaica,  realize  what  a 
remarkable  observer  and  recorder  was  Philip  Gosse  in  his  contem- 
plation of  the  world's  fauna.  Yet  it  was  he — long  ago — who  first 
put  me  on  the  track  of  the  Okapi.  In  a  book  which  he  published 
somewhere  in  the  middle  of  the  'sixties,  he  discussed  the  possi- 
bility of  the  "unicorn's"  existence  almost  in  that  very  region  of 


Above:  Lieut.  Colonel  C.  A.  Edwards,  commandant  of  the  Nyasaland  forces 
in  the  last  war  (1895-7)  against  the  Arab  slave-traders. 


Beloiu:  Arab  traders  in  Nyasaland  (1895). 


THE  STORY  OF  MY  LIFE 


309 


Equatorial  Central  Africa  where  the  Okapi  was  actually  found. 
He  based  his  suppositions  on  the  works  of  Dapper  and  other 
Dutch,  French,  Portuguese  or  English  travelers  in  the  Camer- 
oons  and  western  Congoland,  in  the  seventeenth,  eighteenth,  and 
early  nineteenth  centuries. 

Re-reading  all  this  and  discussing  the  matter  with  Stanley 
before  going  to  Uganda,  I  came  to  the  conclusion  that  there  must 
be  some  large  hoofed  animal  haunting  the  Congo  Forest  and 
described  by  Stanley  as  a  kind  of  donkey  occasionally  caught  in 
pits.  Thus,  as  will  be  seen  later,  the  Okapi  was  brought  to  light, 
but  the  first  promoter  of  the  quest  was  Philip  Gosse,  and  his 
son  Edmund  I  knew  as  a  literary  man,  a  genial  Government 
official,  in  a  dull  office,  and  the  giver  of  good  dinners. 

Edmund  Gosse  saluted  my  return  to  England  by  an  invitation 
to  dine  with  him  and  a  circle  of  literary  men  at  his  club.  I 
accepted.  The  club  in  reality  was  The  National,  a  little-known 
institution  located  in  Whitehall  Gardens,  much  frequented  by 
Government  clerks  who  could  be  very  cynical  and  amusing  over 
its  conditions,  its  membership  being  restricted  to  persons  who 
were  "members  of  the  Church  of  England." 

Then  came  my  "command"  to  Windsor,  and,  in  view  of  the 
possibility  of  being  asked  to  stay  the  night  at  the  Castle,  I  wrote 
or  telegraphed  to  Gosse,  explaining  why,  with  deep  regret,  I 
could  not  fulfil  the  engagement  on  that  particular  night.  Unfor- 
tunately I  addressed  it  to  the  National  Liberal  Club.  It  went  to 
the  National  Liberal,  and  there  it  lay  for  several  days,  till  the  hall 
porter  bethought  him  that  Mr.  Gosse  was  not  a  member,  and  re- 
addressed  the  envelope  to  where  he  might  be  found.  But  of 
course  in  the  meantime  the  dinner  took  place.  It  had  been  care- 
fully, even  beautifully  arranged.  The  hour  struck,  the  guests 
assembled  with  only  one  absentee.  They  waited  for  three-quar- 
ters of  an  hour,  at  last  gave  me  up,  dined  without  me  and  vowed 
themselves  for  the  rest  of  their  lives  enemies  and  detractors. 

I  have,  it  is  true,  often  dined,  supped  and  tea-ed  with  Gosse 
subsequently,  but  it  has  always  been  with  his  reserve,  "I  ask 
you,  but  if  you  don't  come,  I  shall  not  care  a  button." 


310 


THE  STORY  OF  MY  LIFE 


A  serious  blow  awaited  me  soon  after  my  return  to  England. 
Sir  Percy  Anderson — whom  I  had  come  to  regard  as  a  second 
father;  the  man  who  from  the  autumn  of  1883  onward  had 
done  so  much  to  encourage  me  to  enter  the  Government  Service 
in  Africa,  and  who  had  hoped  after  my  settlement  of  British 
Central  Africa  difficulties,  to  see  me  made  Minister  at  Brussels, 
to  guide  King  Leopold's  footsteps  along  the  right  lines  of  African 
development — was  suddenly  seized  with  symptoms  of  a  wander- 
ing clot  in  his  veins.  I  dined  with  him  the  night  after  my  arrival 
in  London,  and  within  another  week  he  was  dead. 

One  of  his  last  ideas,  and  the  first  expressed  on  my  return 
home  was  that  I  should  be  lent  his  wife's  house  in  the  Bourne- 
mouth pine-woods  for  a  month's  complete  rest;  but  as  this  was 
rendered  impossible  by  his  death,  and  his  widow's  mourning,  I 
took  instead  a  country  house  prettily  situated  near  Wimborne, 
overlooking  the  broad  valley  of  the  Stour,  and  with  the  ground 
behind  it  rising  into  beautiful  forested  hills.  Here  I  had  my  sis- 
ters and  various  Foreign  Office  friends  to  stay.  It  was  the  real 
sunrise  of  the  bicycle.  A  year  or  two  previously  the  Safety 
bicycle  had  been  perfected,  and  all  the  world  was  on  wheels.  My 
comparatively  large  house-party — which  included,  before  long, 
Winifred  Irby,  to  whom  I  was  engaged  to  be  married,  and  her 
brother — was  all  mounted  on  bicycles,  and  we  went  on  expedi- 
tions of  astounding  length  and  variety:  all  over  Dorsetshire, 
Wilts,  and  much  of  Hampshire. 

I  visited  my  beloved  Mrs.  Freshfield  in  the  New  Forest,  where 
her  family  was  settled  for  the  summer ;  and  her  delightful  Ritchie 
sisters  at  their  Dorsetshire  home.  On  October  15th  I  was  mar- 
ried at  St.  Paul's,  Knightsbridge,  and  we  spent  a  month's  honey- 
moon in  Italy,  during  an  exceedingly,  exasperatingly  rainy  au- 
tumn. We  first  went  to  the  Chenevix  Trenches  at  Cadenabbia 
on  Lake  Como. 

I  did  not  wish  to  commence  our  honeymoon  as  guests  in  a 
friend's  house,  but  the  Chenevix  Trenches  in  those  days,  besides 
a  lovely  villa  in  North  Italy  and  an  apartment  in  Rome,  lived 
also  at  Queen  Anne's  Mansions,  where  my  London  home  was 
established. 


THE  STORY  OF  MY  LIFE 


311 


Sir  Clare  Ford  was  then  Ambassador  at  Rome,  whom  I  had 
several  times  visited  on  my  way  to  and  from  Africa  to  advise  him 
on  Italian  claims.  He  had  asked  us  to  put  in  a  few  days  of  our 
honeymoon  at  his  house,  as  he  wanted  to  discuss  with  me  the 
Italian  situation  in  Abyssinia  and  East  Africa.  There  were  also 
some  small  matters  to  be  arranged  at  the  Vatican,  concerning 
Portuguese  Missions  in  Nyasaland.  So  Rome  must  certainly 
form  part  of  my  wedding  tour.  But  the  visit  to  Cadenabbia  was 
somewhat  unfortunate.  We  arrived  there,  newly  married,  in  tor- 
rents of  down-pouring  rain.  The  house  was  recently  finished, 
faultless  in  appointments  and  design,  almost  too  original  in  its 
conception  and  its  charm,  even  for  me  who  thought  myself 
advanced  in  such  matters.  But  the  Trenches  had  reached  a  high 
aestheticism  beyond  my  utmost  peering.  They  were  esoterically 
aesthetic,  or  else  I  was  dazed  by  marriage  and  bewildered  by  the 
floods  of  rain. 

Sometimes  we  were  called  out  by  our  host — the  "we"  being 
five  men — to  save  his  steam  launch  and  its  boat-house  from  de- 
struction by  the  elements,  thus  bringing  us  close  up  against  the 
primitive  warfare  of  the  weather;  or,  after  dinner,  shutters 
closed  and  blinds  drawn,  we  were  borne  into  realms  of  discussion 
and  art  appreciation  beyond  my  powers;  or  we  heard  the  music 
of  various  instruments  or  songs  in  tenor  and  soprano  of  such 
excellence  that  I  was  not  attuned  to  appreciate,  with  the  raging 
of  the  storm  outside. 

I  am  ashamed  to  say  we  both  felt  thankful,  naturally  and  con- 
versationally, when  we  steamed  away  in  the  express  from  Como 
to  Rome.  Here,  my  wife  explored  the  catacombs,  and  saw  the 
conventional  sights,  whilst  I  penetrated  the  Vatican,  and  con- 
ferred with  Cardinal  Ledochovski.  He  was  at  that  time  at  the 
head  of  the  Propaganda  in  Rome,  and  my  object  was  to  assure 
him  that  the  White  Fathers  under  the  somewhat  fussy,  intensely 
Francophil  Cardinal  Lavigerie  of  Algeria,  and  the  Portuguese 
Missionaries  from  Mogambique  would  be  just  as  likely  to  prosper 
and  make  converts  under  the  British  flag  as  under  the  Portuguese 
insignia. 

Cardinal  Ledochovski  was  an  accomplished  man  of  consider- 


312 


THE  STORY  OF  MY  LIFE 


able  erudition.  Before  I  entered  his  great  library  and  made  his 
acquaintance,  I  was  told  by  Monsignor  Stonor,  my  introducer, 
that  there  was  literally  nothing  he  did  not  know  about  Africa. 

Of  course,  the  range  of  knowledge  then  considered  sufficient 
for  the  grasping  of  African  problems  was  very  restricted.  Cardi- 
nal Ledochovski  knew  a  great  deal,  but  he  could  not  be  very  exact 
about  geographical  names,  and  persisted  in  confusing  the  Shire 
River,  which  flowed  out  of  Lake  Nyasa  to  the  Zambezi,  with  the 
Shari  River,  which  flowed  into  Lake  Chad.  He  could  not  dis- 
entangle the  two  streams  in  his  mind,  and  the  journeys  and  con- 
quests he  ascribed  to  me  from  the  mouth  of  the  Zambezi  to  the 
very  heart  of  Nigeria,  gave  me  a  range  of  experience,  of  con- 
quest, and  of  mere  walking  power  which  should  have  indeed 
made  me  remarkable  as  an  African  Administrator. 

However,  we  settled  the  few  points  in  debate,  and  there  was 
never  any  further  trouble  between  Rome  and  British  Central 
Africa. 

The  Cardinal  asked  me,  when  the  business  was  concluded,  what 
service  in  return  he  could  render  to  me  in  connection  with  my 
visit  to  Rome.  I  longed  to  say  that  I  should  like,  with  my  wife, 
to  be  presented  to  the  Pope,  Leo  xiii.  But  what  caused  me  to 
hesitate  was  the  knowledge  of  the  number  of  British  notabilities, 
peers  and  peeresses,  staying  on  in  Rome,  in  the  hope  of  being  pre- 
sented; so — foolishly  perhaps — I  took  a  lower  line.  I  told  the 
Cardinal  of  my  intense  desire  to  see  the  Vatican  Gardens,  to  be 
allowed  to  visit  the  Pope's  menagerie  of  wild  animals,  and  to 
sketch  and  make  drav/ings  for  publication  of  the  things  that 
interested  me.  As  he  smiled  kindly  and  listened,  I  further  went 
on  to  say  that  I  was  not  a  wealthy  person  and  desired  to  pay  for 
my  honeymoon  by  my  writings,  and  that  I  thought  a  full  descrip- 
tion of  the  Gardens  of  the  Vatican  might  interest  the  public  that 
read  the  Graphic,  and  at  the  same  time  pay  the  cost  of  my  visit  to 
Rome. 

He  said,  "Leave  it  to  me,"  and  called  up  a  secretary,  and  con- 
versed with  him  rapidly  in  an  undertone.  The  man  jotted  down 
notes;  and  thereafter  I  spent  a  really  delightful  week,  if  not 


THE  STORY  OF  MY  LIFE 


313 


longer,  visiting  the  Vatican  precincts  of  St.  Peter's,  very  often 
alone,  sometimes  accompanied  by  a  clerical  guide ;  the  Zoological 
Gardens  in  the  grounds;  and  the  beautiful  wistful  park,  which 
was  said  to  stretch  in  this  or  the  other  direction  for  nine  miles. 

Once,  when  we  were  in  the  park,  we  were  informed  by  a 
gardener  that  the  Pope's  carriage  was  approaching.  We  drew 
up  at  the  side  of  the  road,  a  quiet-looking  brougham  came  to  a 
stop,  and  an  old  man  descended  from  it,  either  to  visit  a  shrine 
or  merely  to  see  what  we  were  up  to.  His  kindly  gaze  embraced 
us;  he  re-entered  his  carriage  and  drove  ofif;  thus  we  saw  Leo 
XIII.,  after  all. 

On  my  return  to  London  at  the  end  of  November,  I  began  to 
feel  anxious  as  to  my  next  destination,  whether  Lord  Salisbury's 
assurances  to  Sir  Percy  Anderson  as  to  my  promotion  were  going 
to  be  fulfilled.  I  went  to  pay  a  call  on  Sir  Eric  Barrington,  the 
Private  Secretary  of  the  Prime  Minister  at  the  Foreign  Office. 
He  said  I  could  be  given  at  once  the  Consulate-General  of  Nor- 
way, but  that  he  was  not  committing  an  indiscretion  in  telling  me 
that  Lord  Salisbury  really  had  me  in  view  for  the  High  Commis- 
sionership  of  South  Africa  at  Cape  Town,  if  Lord  Loch  per- 
sisted in  resigning.  H  I  would  prefer  that  with  its  interesting 
African  developments,  I  need  not  bother  about  Norway,  but 
could  get  extended  leave  in  London,  which  would  be  of  service 
in  studying  certain  official  questions. 

I  expressed  myself  satisfied  with  this  assurance,  as  I  assumed 
he  would  not  have  spoken  so  much  in  detail,  without  authority. 
Lord  Salisbury  afterwards  said  or  wrote  to  me  that  "Eric  had  no 
business  to  tell  you  so  much  before  he  was  authorized." 

Apparently  what  happened  during  that  winer  of  1896-7  was 
that  Lord  Salisbury  did  propose  to  send  me  out  to  South  Africa 
as  High  Commissioner,  but  that  his  views  were  opposed  by  Cham- 
berlain who  preferred  the  employ  of  Sir  Alfred  Milner.  How- 
ever, the  London  newspapers  discussed  the  question  of  selection 
between  Sir  Alfred  Milner,  myself,  and  a  third  person — I  think 
Sir  Hubert  Jerningham. 


314 


THE  STORY  OF  MY  LIFE 


At  last  the  decision  was  made — Sir  Alfred  Milner.  I  suspect 
very  much  on  the  personal  pleadings  of  Cecil  Rhodes,  who  pro- 
fessed himself  delighted  with  the  choice. 

It  was  generally  assumed  by  him  and  his  friends — I  hesitate  to 
write  advisers,  as  he  very  seldom  took  any  one's  advice — that  the 
choice  of  Milner  by  Chamberlain  meant  the  eventual  coercion  of 
the  Transvaal,  the  coming  South  African  War.  Whether,  if  I 
had  been  chosen  instead,  I  could  have  maintained  British  suprem- 
acy south  of  the  Zambezi  without  a  conflict  with  Kruger,  I  can 
not  say.  I  was  quite  as  much  opposed  to  the  mental  attitude  of 
the  recalcitrant  Boers  and  Africanders  as  Lord  Milner  could  have 
been.  Their  policy  towards  the  natives  was  far  more  despotic 
and  wilfully  stupid  than  ours  had  ever  been;  their  lack  of  interest 
in  native  languages,  in  intelligent  Natural  History,  exceeded  ours 
by  many  degrees. 

However,  the  non-selection  of  myself  for  a  work  that  would 
have  greatly  interested  me,  was  a  disappointment,  and  I  felt  it 
was  due  to  Rhodes's  enmity  more  than  to  any  other  cause. 

A  good  deal  of  the  spring  of  this  year  was  taken  up  with  close 
work  on  my  book  on  British  Central  Africa,  and  its  illustrations. 
I  also,  under  the  encouragement  of  Ella  Hepworth-Dickson  wrote 
a  short  story  for  the  Saturday  Review,  then  under  the  editorship 
of  the  wayward  Frank  Harris.  I  have  forgotten  the  name  and 
substance  of  the  story,  though  it  was  based  on  a  real  happening  in 
Central  Africa,  but  I  attached  a  great  deal  more  importance  to  its 
publication  than  seemed  justified.  Since  the  middle  of  the 
'eighties  I  had  had  a  strong  desire  to  write  truth  under  the  form 
of  fiction,  and  in  1889,  my  first  story  {The  History  of  a  Slave) 
was  published  by  the  Graphic.  But  Frank  Harris  seemingly  did 
not  share  my  views  or  was  not  impressed  by  my  work.  He 
grudgingly  accepted  a  second  story  {A  Study  of  Mission  Life) 
but  it  never  appeared,  and  when  I  proffered  timid  enquiries,  I 
was  bluntly  told  it  had  been  mislaid  or  lost,  and  there  was  an  end 
of  the  matter. 

Somewhere  about  May  or  June  in  1897,  I  was  offered  by  Lord 
Salisbury  the  post  of  Consul-General  in  Tunis,  on  the  transfer- 


THE  STORY  OF  MY  LIFE 


315 


ence  of  the  occupant  to  Venezuela.  I  accepted  this,  not  without 
pleasure,  because  although  the  salary  and  allowances  did  not 
meet  its  expenses,  I  knew  it  of  old,  and  the  two  houses  that  would 
be  allotted  to  me.  Being  thus  satisfied  as  to  my  immediate  future, 
I  gave  myself  up  to  the  enjoyment  of  the  second  Jubilee.  We 
saw  the  procession  magnificently  and  under  circumstances  of  the 
utmost  comfort  from  the  Graphic  Offices  in  the  Strand. 

We  went  to  a  party  given  by  the  Queen  at  Buckingham  Palace, 
and  several  other  State  ceremonials  of  the  same  kind,  and  as  soon 
as  the  last  London  reception  was  over,  we  moved  down  to  a 
charming  rectory  in  West  Sussex,  which  I  had  taken  for  three 
months. 

This  was  at  Walberton,  a  little  more  than  three  miles  west  of 
Arundel,  and  situated  in  those  days  in  truly  beautiful  scenery;  old 
villages  with  scarcely  an  ugly  or  a  modern  house  in  them;  old 
churches  going  back  to  the  twelfth  and  thirteenth  centuries;  mag- 
nificent woods  belonging  to  the  Duke  of  Norfolk,  into  and 
through  which  we  penetrated  unhindered  and  unhampered  by 
any  disagreeable  question  from  a  keeper.  To  the  north  there 
were  the  downs,  and  we  were  experiencing  at  that  time  the  new 
joy  of  the  bicycle.  We  all  bicycled,  my  wife  and  myself,  my 
brothers  and  sisters,  and  almost  all  my  friends.  On  an  occasional 
night  of  full  moon,  we  bicycled  all  night,  and  saw  the  dawn 
from  the  Sussex  Downs,  sleeping  afterwards  in  the  hot  day-time. 
Never  before,  had  I  realized  the  full  beauty  of  West  Sussex  scen- 
ery, between  the  Arun  and  the  Hampshire  border.  The  twenty- 
five  following  years  though  they  have  found  me  settled  in  Sus- 
sex, have  provided  the  disheartening  spectacle  of  the  breaking 
up  of  this  beauty,  the  building  of  ugly  but  convenient  modern 
houses  in  ancient  villages,  the  cutting  down  of  woods,  the  estab- 
lishing of  brick-works,  the  erection  of  corrugated  iron  chapels, 
and  the  adoption  of  corrugated  iron,  the  ugliest  of  all  materials 
that  ever  came  from  man's  hand,  as  the  sheet  anchor  of  the 
farmer  for  roofing  and  storage.  The  strewing  of  paper  by  excur- 
sionists created  by  the  bicycle,  and  the  mysterious  multiplication 
of  Gypsies — a  nomad  population  of  southern  England,  originat- 


316 


THE  STORY  OF  MY  LIFE 


ing  in  the  East  End  of  London,  filthy  in  habits  and  clothing,  cov- 
ered with  vermin,  entirely  without  education,  but  scarcely  more 
Romany  in  descent  than  I  am — under  all  these  agencies  (stimu- 
lated from  its  false  capital,  Brighton)  the  beauty  and  the  former 
interest  of  Sussex  are  disappearing  at  a  rapid  rate.  But  in  1897 
these  horrors  and  disappointments  were  unforeseeable,  and  I 
resolved  that  when  the  time  came  for  my  retirement,  I  would  try 
to  make  a  home  in  West  Sussex. 

In  the  meantime  I  started  for  Tunis  in  September,  1897,  mak- 
ing arrangements  for  my  brother  Alex  to  join  me  as  my  private 
secretary.  He  was  nineteen  years  younger  than  myself,  and  had 
what  seemed  to  me  a  practical  education  under  my  own  guidance, 
and  much  of  it  in  France.  He  had  mastered  shorthand  and 
typewriting,  and  had  learned  French  very  thoroughly  at  a  place 
whither  several  of  my  friends  at  the  Foreign  Office  had  resorted 
for  the  same  purpose. 

I  went  out  to  Tunis  alone,  having  business  to  do  in  Paris  on 
the  way  with  Sir  E.  Monson,  then  Ambassador  at  Paris.  I  also 
wished  to  put  in  a  few  days  of  study  at  the  Jardin  d'Acclimata- 
tion.  Here  they  had  a  fine  collection  of  West  African  water- 
birds,  including  that  beautiful  creature,  the  saddle-billed  stork.  I 
had  brought  back  from  Central  Africa  two  pictures  painted  there, 
which  I  wished  to  finish,  and  send  to  the  Royal  Academy.  One 
of  these  depicted  a  scene  on  the  shores  of  Lake  Nyasa ;  a  collec- 
tion of  crocodiles  and  water-birds  on  a  sand-bank  against  a  back- 
ground of  papyrus. 


CHAPTER  XIV 


When  I  reached  Tunis  to  take  over  the  charge  of  the  Con- 
sulate from  Mr.  Gerald  Lascelles  who  had  been  Acting  Consul- 
General,  the  summer  heats  still  persisted.  They  were  terrific ;  but 
probably  in  the  accounts  rendered  and  the  temperatures  cited 
(115°,  1 12°  in  the  shade)  they  were  somewhat  exaggerated.  To 
go  out  in  the  day-time  between  nine  in  the  morning  and  three, 
seemed  to  me  like  walking  through  white  flame,  as  though  at  any 
moment,  one's  clothing  might  ignite  and  burn  one  up. 

The  previous  holder  of  this  post  at  Tunis  had  left  both  town 
and  country  house  in  a  great  state  of  untidiness  and  disorder,  and 
my  first  impressions  were  the  sadder  because  I  dimly  remembered 
these  houses  under  the  delightful  hospitality  of  Mrs.  Reade.  I 
saw  great  changes,  great  improvements  in  Tunis,  but  some  sup- 
pression of  picturesqueness ;  though  nothing  like  as  much  in  this 
respect  (I  afterwards  learned)  as  what  prevails  to-day. 

My  wife  joined  me  a  few  weeks  later,  and  with  her  co-opera- 
tion we  soon  got  the  beautiful  country  house — palace,  it  was — 
at  Marsa,  clean,  comfortable,  and  adequately  furnished. 

From  one  cause  or  another,  however,  I  had  become  unwell  with 
a  poisoned  and  swollen  foot,  so  that  it  was  with  the  greatest  diffi- 
culty and  something  approaching  agony,  that  I  dressed  in  uni- 
form and  tight  boots,  for  presentation  to  the  Bey  of  Tunis.  The 
French  Minister  Resident,  Mons.  Rene  Millet,  I  soon  realized  as 
a  friend.  I  felt  we  could  not  possibly  be  enemies.  In  the  first 
place  Great  Britain  had  given  in  to  France  in  all  directions  over 
Tunis.  We  had  just  concluded  a  new  re-arrangement  of  our 
rights  in  that  Regency  which  virtually  sacrificed  them  to  French 
insistence.  There  was  the  position  of  the  Maltese  subjects  to 
watch,  but  they  themselves  in  Tunis  and  Algeria  were  so  well 
inclined  towards  France,  that  in  the  latter  country  many  of  them 

317 


318 


THE  STORY  OF  MY  LIFE 


were  becoming  French  subjects.  In  short,  there  seemed  to  me, 
to  be  little  or  nothing  to  quarrel  about  in  this  direction ;  and  as  I 
had  assisted  at  the  opening  phase  of  the  French  domination  in 
Tunis,  on  the  French  side,  no  British  official  could  have  been 
found  more  sympathetic  towards  French  rule. 

Mons.  Millet  was  one  of  the  most  likable  French  officials  with 
whom  an  Englishman  could  deal.  He  was  connected  in  relation- 
ship with  Mrs.  Belloc,  through  her  French  husband,  and  referred 
to  her  children — Hilaire  Belloc  and  Mrs.  Belloc-Lowndes — as  his 
cousins.  He  had  several  times  visited  England  and  the  United 
States,  and  was  in  every  sense  of  the  word,  a  man  of  the  world. 
His  wife  was  the  perfection  of  a  Frenchwoman,  handsome,  dig- 
nified, motherly,  and  musical,  and  they  had  a  nice  family  of  chil- 
dren— the  eldest,  Philippe  Millet,  has  since  become  a  famous 
soldier  and  war  correspondent.  Millet's  principal  assistant,  the 
Deputy  Minister  Resident — so  to  speak — was  Paul  Revoil,  the 
husband  of  a  really  beautiful  and  really  charming — one  has  to 
insert  this  adverb  to  insist  that  one's  praise  is  well  merited — 
Irishwoman.  He  afterwards  became  celebrated  as  the  French 
Envoy  in  Morocco.  One  of  Millet's  Consul-secretaries  (Mons. 
Gaussin)  was  a  Norman,  and  with  his  sister  seemed  more  Eng- 
lish than  French — and  so  one  might  run  on.  I  can  not  remember 
meeting  a  single  person  in  the  French  civil-officialdom  of  Tunis, 
that  was  not  pleasant,  capable  and  inclined  to  be  friendly.  Here 
and  there  still  existed  and  lingered  occasional  individuals,  Tunis- 
ian and  even  French  (such  as  the  Director-General  of  the  Bone- 
Guelma  Railways)  whom  I  had  known  seventeen  years  before. 
But  for  the  most  part  the  officials  and  my  Consular  colleagues 
were  new  acquaintances.  Amongst  these  colleagues,  we  liked  the 
best  the  Austro-Hungarian  Consul-General  (the  Baron  von 
Pereira)  and  his  wife  and  daughters.  Mme.  de  Pereira  was  in 
nationality  a  Croat.  She  was  exceedingly  handsome,  and  kind- 
hearted  to  match.  Her  daughters,  Yetta  and  Annie,  were  worthy 
of  being  her  daughters.  Yetta,  who  might  have  passed  anywhere 
as  being  a  pretty  English  girl,  often  came  to  stay  with  us,  or 
traveled  with  us  into  the  interior.  The  Great  War  amongst  many 


THE  STORY  OF  MY  LIFE 


319 


other  deprivations  cut  off  our  relations  with  these  lovable  people, 
but  they  are  often  with  us  in  our  thoughts,  Yetta  especially,  who 
spoke  English  like  a  well-bred  Englishwoman,  and  although  only 
in  the  early  'twenties,  knew  English  literature  better  than  we  did. 

The  German  Consul-General  in  those  days  was  generally  a 
mysterious  traveler  in  the  Sahara,  and  the  Italian  Consul-General, 
oddly  enough,  seldom  became  one  of  our  intimates.  Among  these 
intimates  was  Mme.  Aubert,  the  wife  of  the  afore-mentioned 
Director-General  of  the  Railways.  She  was  in  reality  of  Ameri- 
can birth,  but  of  a  family  much  estranged  from  the  United  States, 
and  associated  with  the  Mediterranean.  I  believe  she  was  a  de- 
scendant or  connection  of  John  Howard  Payne,  American  Consul 
in  Tunis,  nearly  a  hundred  years  ago,  who  wrote  the  words  of 
Home,  Sweet  Home.  I  know  she  was  much  connected  with  the 
affairs  of  the  English  Church  and  cemetery  in  Tunis,  that  were 
nominally  under  my  guidance,  and  we  used  to  have  amiable  cor- 
respondence about  the  graves  of  her  ancestors,  which  had  to  be 
moved  to  provide  a  better  site  for  a  larger  church.  She  was, 
theoretically,  a  Protestant,  though  married  to  a  very  thorough- 
going Catholic. 

Our  English  pastor  in  Tunis  was  in  reality  a  worthy  German 
in  origin,  though  he  may  in  course  of  time  have  become  a  nat- 
uralized British  subject.  I  think  his  wife  was  also  German;  but 
they  derived  the  greater  part  of  their  modest  income  from  a 
British  society  of  long  standing  for  the  conversion  of  the  Jews. 
Mr.  Flad  was  in  reality  a  Lutheran  bred  and  born,  muscle  and 
bone,  but  he  tried  out  of  politeness  to  be  Anglican.  The  one 
thing  he  could  not  himself  distinguish,  and  therefore  abolish,  was 
his  German  accent.  This  I  remember  from  the  very  first  sermon 
I  heard  him  preach  on  New  Year's  Day  in  1898.  He  announced 
that  his  subject  was  "Pease."  He  wished  for  us  through  the 
coming  year  "Pease  from  the  Prince  of  Pease,  Pease  in  our 
hearts,  pease  in  our  lives.    Pease  from  the  Prince  of  Pease." 

I  became  so  fidgety  and  upset  over  the  trouble  in  my  foot,  that 
as  soon  as  my  wife  was  established  in  her  Tunisian  home,  I 
resolved — in  order  to  forget  it  or  force  a  cure — to  go  on  a  long 


320 


THE  STORY  OF  MY  LIFE 


tour  of  inspection  down  the  coast  of  Tunis,  as  far  as  Tripoli, 
where  I  might  see  my  British  colleague  and  discuss  some  points 
affecting  both  the  Consulates.  I  also  hoped  to  explore  the  Tunis- 
ian Sahara  during  the  cool  season,  and  obtained  the  necessary 
permission  and  backing  from  Mons.  Millet,  so  that  I  could  enter 
the  military  zones  without  fear  of  indiscretion. 

My  visit  to  Tripoli  interested  me  greatly,  and  my  reception  at 
the  hands  of  Mr.  Jago  could  not  have  been  kinder.  His  Consular 
residence  outside  was  of  aggressive  blankness,  a  thoroughly  east- 
ern exterior,  but  inside  it  was  a  delightful  Moorish  palace,  with 
patios  and  hanging  galleries,  bananas,  palms  and  flowers,  rich 
carpets,  and  an  array  of  curiosities,  classic  and  medic'Eval.  I  rode 
out  to  palm  groves  and  stretches  of  desert-sand,  distant  views  of 
Tripoli,  and  encampments  of  surly  Moors.  In  the  recesses  of  the 
town  I  made  sketches  in  the  bazaars  of  wonderful  mosque  fronts, 
streets  with  a  long  perspective  of  arches.  Then  from  Tripoli 
my  steamer  turned  back  to  the  coast  of  Tunis,  and  landed  me 
and  my  one  attendant,  the  good-tempered  janissary  from  the 
Consulate,  Muhammad  bel  Hajj.  Though  he  had  never  traveled 
so  far  afield  before,  he  considered  himself  competent  to  serve  as 
guide  and  interpreter.  He  was  a  Moor  of  good  family  connected 
for  several  generations  with  the  British  Consulate;  he  spoke 
French  and  some  Italian,  and  my  own  Arabic,  though  originally 
learned  in  Tunis,  had  become  so  shaky  from  disuse,  that  I  always 
talked  to  him  in  French,  even  though  in  the  course  of  two  years 
with  us,  he  learned  English  and  I  reacquired  Arabic.  Like  most 
Moors,  he  was  a  good  rider. 

Coming  from  Tripoli,  I  landed  at  the  capital  of  the  island  of 
Jerba.  The  people  of  this  remarkable  island  were  said  to  be  of 
mainly  Berber  stock.  They  belonged  to  some  distinct  sect  of 
Islam,  which  had  come  into  existence  as  early  as  the  close  of  the 
seventh  century.  How  far  it  differed  from  orthodox  Islam.  I 
have  forgotten,  if  I  ever  knew.  It  really  seemed  to  me  after  see- 
ing that  island  that  the  Islamic  invaders  had  absorbed  and 
adopted  the  beliefs  of  some  ancient  Phoenician  faith. 

Another  point  that  interested  me  in  Jerba  was  seeing  the  tidal 


THE  STORY  OF  MY  LIFE 


321 


Mediterranean.  In  this  dip  of  the  Greater  Syrtis,  there  is  more 
evidence  of  tidal  action  than  elsewhere  in  the  Mediterranean,  a 
rise  and  fall  of  two  to  three  feet,  so  that  the  sands  are  alternately 
left  bare  and  re-covered  by  the  waves. 

From  Jerba  we  were  ferried  across  to  the  mainland,  and  on 
hired  horses  we  sped  away  over  the  desert  to  the  French  garrison 
post  of  Medenin. 

The  Moorish  town  here  with  its  groves  of  palm-trees,  its  mud- 
colored  buildings,  but  white-domed  mosques,  was  exceedingly 
picturesque.  Thenceforth  all  of  the  towns  inland  were  objects 
to  me  of  interest,  from  their  many  tall,  domed  buildings  in  mud 
bricks,  and  their  doors  with  huge  keys  and  Brobdingnagian  locks. 
We  traversed  the  Matmata  Highlands,  where  we  left  the  desert 
altogether,  for  a  region  of  scrub,  long  grass  and  even  woodland. 
Here  or  in  the  south  of  this  district  was  a  country  of  wonderful 
underground  dwellings,  adaptations  of  the  cave.  In  this  or  that 
place  you  might  live  in  a  small  area  and  see  all  degrees  of  develop- 
ment in  cave-dwelling.  There  might  be  the  unimproved  crevice 
or  hollow  in  the  limestone  rock  used  now  and  again  for  human 
habitation.  Then  there  were  specimens  of  these  caves  where  the 
entrance  had  been  restricted  by  the  employment  of  timber  stakes. 
The  interior  also  had  been  enlarged  and  modified  by  hacking. 
From  this  you  would  pass  to  something  stylish  and  developed; 
a  precipitous  front  of  limestone  into  which  door  and  windows 
had  been  cut. 

You  passed  through  the  door,  and  there  was  quite  a  habitation 
within  carved  neatly  out  of  the  limestone,  and  comprising  three 
or  more  rooms.  Again,  in  some  adjoining  district,  there  might 
be  quite  a  different  style  of  dwelling.  When  you  had  seen  all  the 
developments  and  ramifications  from  the  mere  cave  to  the  elabo- 
rated cave  dwelling,  cut  out  and  carved,  furniture  and  room-space 
alike,  from  the  limestone  rock,  you  came  to  the  horizontal  system. 
In  this  case,  you  suddenly  found  yourself  riding  along  the  edge 
of  a  short  precipice.  Then  you  were  directed  into  a  gulley  deep 
enough  for  the  passage  of  camels,  and  you  emerged  through 
natural  arches  of  stone  into  a  great  chamber  open  to  the  sky. 


322 


THE  STORY  OF  MY  LIFE 


From  this  central  apartment,  rooms  of  a  more  private  nature 
were  cut  out  of  the  rock.  Some  of  these  excavations  were  large, 
to  serve  for  the  housing  of  a  whole  clan.  They  were  delightful 
places  to  sleep  in,  as  the  temperature  was  so  even,  neither  very 
hot  nor  very  cold;  and  lighted  up  by  oil  lamps,  the  white-gray 
glistening  walls  looked  clean.  I  never  remember  being  plagued 
with  fleas  in  this  cave  country. 

One  noteworthy  place  we  visited  was  Dwirat,  an  ancient  town 
on  a  fragment  of  a  table-topped  mountain.  The  plateaux  round 
about  had  been  cut  up  at  some  period  by  a  heavy  rainfall  into 
sections  with  precipitous  sides,  ending  in  long  stony  slopes.  In 
the  river  valleys  which  wound  through  this  plateau  country,  there 
were  oases  and  clumps  of  palms,  and  occasionally  a  little  water. 

A  winding  path  developed  by  the  French  into  a  fairly  good 
road,  wound  and  twisted  up  the  face  of  Dwirat,  and  landed  you 
in  the  extraordinary  town  which  hung  to  the  summit.  This  town 
seemed  to  be  the  product  of  centuries ;  one  could  have  imagined 
its  beginning  nearly  three  thousand  years  ago  with  some  settle- 
ment of  the  Phoenicians  indicated  by  cyclopaean  masonry  of  un- 
mortared  stones.  Above  that  was  a  Roman  phase;  then  several 
tiers  of  Saracenic  style,  ending  in  a  pert  little  gimcrack  French 
Post  Office,  erected  only  a  few  years  previously. 

The  people  of  Dwirat  still  used  in  their  homes  a  Berber  dialect, 
of  which  I  wrote  down  a  number  of  words,  but  of  course  to  me 
they  spoke  Tunisian  Arabic.  The  chief  or  sheikh  of  the  town 
was  a  charming,  handsome  man,  beautifully  dressed  in  Moorish 
garments,  hospitable,  friendly  and  informative.  I  made  a  paint- 
ing of  him  for  the  Graphic,  against  a  background  of  open  Sa- 
hara, two  thousand  feet  below.  He  was  feeding  his  pigeons ;  and 
throughout  the  towns  of  Tunis  I  always  delighted  in  the  pigeons 
of  many  varieties,  many  colors. 

I  left  Dwirat  with  regret.  The  delicious  air,  the  winding  up- 
and-down  streets  of  its  three-thousand-years-old  town ;  the  great 
good  looks  of  its  people,  who  seemed  to  pass  their  time  from  one 
festivity  to  another — even  the  funerals  had  a  quaint  aspect  that 
bordered  on  gaiety.    There  was  no  visible  representative  of 


THE  STORY  OF  MY  LIFE 


323 


France,  except  a  half-caste  postmaster.  Caravans  seemed  to 
arrive  from  across  the  desert,  and  I  conversed  with  a  dark-com- 
plexioned traveler,  who  had  come  from  Timbuktu,  and  had  seen 
steamers  of  the  Niger  Company  on  the  Lower  Niger.  I  asked 
what  was  his  ostensible  profession,  and  I  was  told  "a  dentist," 
and  that  he  attended  generally  to  the  teeth  of  the  Sahara  tribes 
between  southern  Tunis  and  Timbuktu. 

From  Dwirat,  however,  I  had  to  turn  north  and  ride,  some- 
times losing  my  way,  but  never  deserted  by  the  faithful  Muham- 
mad, over  the  Matmata  plateaux  to  Gabes,  near  the  coast.  Here 
I  re-visited  my  old  friend.  Allegro  of  seventeen  years  before,  who 
was  now  closing  his  career  in  Tunis  as  Governor  of  Gabes.  His 
fine  eyes  had  lost  their  power  of  seeing,  and  he  had  become  a 
shaky  invalid. 

From  this  place  I  rode  to  Gafsa,  where  I  spent  some  days  in 
business  with  Maltese  British  subjects,  and  in  sketching  amaz- 
ingly picturesque  buildings,  which,  as  in  all  other  towns  of  Tunis, 
dated  from  the  closing  centuries  of  Roman  rule. 

From  Gafsa  I  rode  to  Tebessa  in  Algeria,  through  a  country 
which  became  increasingly  elevated,  picturesque  and  forested  as 
you  passed  northwards,  strewn  also  with  Roman  ruins  to  such  a 
degree  that  in  some  places  the  towns  seemed  only  to  have  been 
deserted  a  few  years  before,  the  buildings  looking  just  as  they 
would  have  done  in  the  fourth  or  fifth  century,  with  doors  still 
standing  and  streets  not  much  obstructed.  It  seemed  a  land 
under  enchantment,  for  there  were  very  few  visible  inhabitants, 
only  an  occasional  shepherd,  most  of  the  people  being  nomads, 
and  of  Berber  stock.  From  Tebessa  I  returned  by  rail  to  the 
town  of  Tunis  in  the  middle  of  December. 

Here  are  extracts  from  a  long  letter  written  by  Lady  Johnston 
describing  an  entertainment  we  gave  at  Marsa  on  Boxing  Day, 
1897.  I  had  seen  the  performances  of  that  curious  sect,  the 
Aissawia  in  1880,  either  in  Algeria  or  Tunis.  I  heard  that  the 
sect  had  its  headquarters  somewhere  near  Tunis  and  it  occurred 
to  me  that  a  performance  on  their  part  might  be  of  interest  to  our 
guests.    Upon  my  suggesting  this  to  our  two  janissaries  who 


324 


THE  STORY  OF  MY  LIFE 


were  to  convey  the  invitation,  I  w^as  told  there  was  very  Httle 
chance  of  its  being  accepted,  as,  though  the  word  "Aissawia" 
inferred  "a  follower  of  Jesus"  it  was  only  Jesus  according  to 
Muhammadan  ideas,  and  Christians  were  abhorrent  to  an  Ais- 
sawia's  mind.  However,  I  knew  something  more  than  they  did 
about  the  matter;  I  had  some  slight  personal  acquaintance  with 
the  leader  of  the  local  "lodge." 

So  the  invitation  was  transmitted  in  a  letter  which  I  painfully 
wrote  in  Arabic  under  the  direction  of  Muhammad  bel  Hajj. 
In  the  letter  I  had  delicately  to  enquire  what  would  be  the  ex- 
penses of  the  entertainment.  To  our  astonishment  we  received 
quite  a  gracious  reply  saying  that  the  total  expenses  would  only 
be  equivalent  to  £8  in  English  money,  that  the  number  of  people 
attending  would  be  about  fifty,  and  that  although  I  was  quite 
right  in  assuming  that  the  sect  did  not  give  any  exhibition  of 
singing  and  dancing  on  Christian  premises,  the  house  I  lived  in 
was  a  former  palace  of  the  Bey  of  Tunis  and  was  considered 
orthodox  in  the  eyes  of  the  Aissawia. 

Their  story  of  not  performing  save  in  a  Muhammadan  house, 
was  apparently  true ;  since,  when  it  was  known  that  they  were  to 
appear  at  the  British  Consulate  in  Marsa  there  was  a  rush, 
almost  a  clamor,  for  invitations  which  ended  by  including  not 
only  the  leading  Maltese  and  British  subjects  but  a  large  pro- 
portion of  the  French  and  Italians. 

The  great  Moorish  hall  of  the  Consulate  was  a  fit  and  proper 
theater  for  the  performance.  A  number  of  rooms  opened  on  to 
the  hall  and  outside  was  a  broad  veranda  with  steps  leading 
down  into  a  garden  on  either  side. 

Here,  then,  is  Lady  Johnston's  letter: — 

"Marsa,  Tunis, 
"December  28th,  1897. 

"I  ought  to  have  my  letter  ready  to  send  to  you  to-day,  but  we 
have  been  made  so  busy  with  the  party  that  I  am  late.  Not  only 
busy  but  at  times  very  anxious  as  everything  seemed  to  go  wrong 
till  after  it  was  over.  In  the  first  place,  Harry  issued  the  invita- 
tions for  'Boxing  Day,'  December  26th,  without  stopping  to  en- 
quire about  the  day  of  the  week.  And  when  they  were  all  sent  out 


THE  STORY  OF  MY  LIFE 


325 


and  nearly  all  accepted,  we  learned  that  Boxing  Day  was  on  a 
Sunday !  This,  of  course,  seemed  quite  right  and  proper  so  far  as 
the  French,  Italians  and  Maltese  were  concerned,  but  it  greatly 
upset  our  chaplain,  Mr.  Flad,  who  is  rather  Sabbatarian.  How- 
ever, it  was  too  late  to  make  any  change  and  it  was  a  day  which 
for  some  reason  seemed  very  auspicious  to  the  Aissawia. 

"In  the  long  run  our  party  went  off  very  well.  About  one 
hundred  and  fifty  people  came,  or  perhaps  rather  more.  I  think 
I  told  you  in  a  previous  letter  that  we  had  engaged  the  Aissawia, 
or  as  I  called  them  then,  the  'devil  dancers,'  which  was  Mr. 
Lascelles's  name  for  them.  It  really  seems,  oddly  enough,  that 
'Aissawia'  means  in  Arabic  'Followers  of  Jesus.'  .  .  .  Well, 
they  came  to  our  party,  forty-seven  of  them,  mostly  Arabs,  but 
some  partly  negro.  It  had  rained  rather  in  the  night  so  that  both 
performers  and  audience  had  to  remain  under  shelter,  but  the 
drawing-room  and  veranda  outside  are  very  large  and  took  us 
all  in.  Before  beginning  the  Chief  of  the  Aissawia  came  up  to 
Harry  and  asked  if  the  ladies  had  not  better  retire  to  the  two 
smaller  rooms  that  opened  off  the  main  drawing-room,  and 
watch  the  performance  from  the  doors,  as  if  they  remained  out- 
side he  would  not  dare  to  let  his  men  go.  Harry,  however,  after 
questioning  some  of  the  ladies,  said  'no,'  as  they  would  not  see 
enough  of  the  performance. 

"However,  we  compromised  by  seating  the  more  elderly  in  the 
background  and  leaving  open  all  the  doors — there  are  five — 
which  gave  on  to  the  drawing-room. 

"Then  the  Aissawia  began.  Some  of  them  sat  on  the  marble 
pavement  and  began  to  play  on  drums  and  tambourines  and  to 
sing  in  a  slow  monotonous  chant.  The  rest  of  the  company  stood 
in  front  of  the  musicians  in  two  opposite  lines,  swaying  their 
bodies  and  nodding  their  heads  backwards  and  forwards  in  time 
to  the  music.  This  went  on  for  a  short  while  until  the  men's 
faces  began  to  get  excited.  Then  one  of  the  singers  got  up  and 
began  to  feed  some  of  the  standing  men  with  bits  of  glass  which 
they  cracked  up  in  their  mouths  and  seemed  to  enjoy.  Then 
they  were  given  scorpions — live  ones — which  they  took  readily 
and  seemed  to  masticate.  Then  the  Saint  of  the  party  began  to 
get  excited  and  removed  some  of  his  upper  garments.  Taking  a 
sword  in  his  hand  he  walked  up  and  down  cutting  himself  until 
the  blood  came.  After  this,  another  of  the  men  took  a  hammer 
and  knocked  the  sword  into  the  Saint's  side.  Next  he  passed  long 
pointed  pieces  of  iron  through  his  cheeks  from  right  to  left, 
through  his  ears  and  nose,  and  even  into  his  throat.   The  face  of 


326 


THE  STORY  OF  MY  LIFE 


the  Saint  looked  by  this  time  as  if  he  were  half-asleep.  During 
this  performance  the  dancing  Aissawia  kept  calling  out  the  name 
of  Jesus  in  Arabic — Aissa,  it  seemed  to  be. 

"Presently  the  Saint  seemed  to  come  to  his  senses.  He  re- 
moved the  sword  point  from  his  side  and  the  iron  spits  that  had 
been  passed  through  his  cheeks.  He  lit  a  torch  and  held  his 
clothes  over  it,  and  they  did  not  burn.  Then  he  passed  his  hand 
through  the  flame  of  the  torch  and  waved  the  torch  about  his 
body.  After  this  he  went  and  sat  down  with  the  musical  per- 
formers, and  there  came  in  his  place  a  man  who  ate  iron  bars, 
or  at  any  rate,  seemed  to  do  so.  Whilst  he  was  doing  this,  two  or 
three  of  the  Aissawia  called  out  'Take  care'  in  two  or  three  lan- 
guages, as  though  they  were  startled,  whilst  a  man  looking  quite 
mad,  dashed  out  of  the  crowd  on  to  the  veranda.  The  Maltese 
bandsmen  who  were  standing  on  the  steps  made  way  for  him  in 
double  quick  time.  He  literally  flew  down  the  stairs,  taking  five 
or  six  at  a  time,  with  his  turban  off  and  his  long  tail  of  unwound 
hair  floating  in  the  wind.  He  disappeared  down  the  garden.  The 
Chief  of  the  Aissawia  sent  some  men  after  him,  but  he  really 
seemed  to  run  like  the  wind,  and  presently  we  saw  him  coming 
back  as  fast  as  he  had  gone,  carrying  on  his  head  a  great  mass 
of  prickly  pear  leaves,  the  thorns  of  which  are  so  fine  and  sharp 
that  if  one  gets  pricked  by  them,  it  makes  a  red  and  swollen 
place  which  lasts  for  days. 

"As  the  man  rushed  back  past  us  into  the  drawing-room,  we 
saw  that  it  was  our  own  Arab  gardener !  He  ran  to  the  feet  of 
the  Aissawia  leader  and  put  down  the  mass  of  prickly  pear  leaves 
before  him.  Then  he  threw  himself  upon  it  and  rubbed  his  face 
against  it.  All  this  time  he  looked  quite  mad.  His  eyes  were 
squinting,  and  his  face  was  pale  and  drawn  and  there  was  foam 
on  his  lips. 

"I  began  to  think  it  was  time  to  get  near  a  door  and  most  of  the 
other  ladies  followed  my  example.  Lulu  only  remained  where 
she  was,  but  she  said  afterwards  it  was  not  bravery,  but  because 
her  dress  was  shut  in  between  two  seats  so  that  she  could  not 
move !  .  .  .  The  man  who  followed  our  gardener  in  perform- 
ance became  so  violent  that  he  had  to  be  held  by  eight  or  nine 
strong  men,  and  it  was  about  all  they  could  do  to  keep  him  in 
their  hold,  whilst  he  ate  raw  meat.  I  was  told  he  wished  to  have 
a  bite  out  of  some  of  us,  as  he  was  what  they  called  *a  man  eater.' 
When  the  fit  is  on  him  he  can  not  hold  himself  in.  He  was  half  a 
negro,  and  his  face  with  its  mad  rolling  eyes  and  foaming  mouth 
was  awful.  They  got  a  hood  over  his  head  at  last,  and  he  fell  to 


THE  STORY  OF  MY  LIFE 


327 


the  ground  in  a  kind  of  fit,  and  was  quiet.  All  this  time,  other 
men  were  foaming  at  the  mouth,  eating  iron  bars  and  glass,  and 
dancing  a  wild  dance,  while  the  kind  of  chant  they  were  singing 
(which  I  am  told,  was  a  prayer  to  Jesus,  until  the  end  when  it 
was  changed  into  a  prayer  to  God)  grew  louder  and  louder  until 
it  ended  suddenly  with  a  great  shout.  The  dance  stopped  and  the 
faces  of  the  men  seemed  to  wake  from  their  madness  and  to 
resume  their  usual  calm  cold  expression.  .   .  . 

"I  was  so  much  interested  in  it  that  I  got  Wallis  to  bring  the 
Arab  gardener  to  me  in  the  evening  and  questioned  him  through 
Wallis,  who  speaks  Arabic.  It  seems  that  this  man  is  one  of  the 
Aissawia,  not  of  the  Tunis  sect  but  of  a  band  in  the  south  of 
Tunisia.  He  wished  to  be  quiet,  being  our  servant — indeed  he  was 
handing  round  cooling  drinks  to  the  ladies  at  the  time,  but  it  was 
too  much  for  him.  Wallis  was  standing  near  him  at  the  time, 
and  saw  him  begin  to  go.  He  took  the  tray  from  him  and  tried 
to  hold  him  back,  but  the  gardener  tried  to  jump  over  the  railing 
and  seeing  he  would  be  killed  if  he  did  that,  he  had  to  be  let  go. 
The  odd  thing  is  that  although  he  tore  up  the  prickly  pear  with 
his  hands,  and  lay  upon  it  and  ate  of  it,  he  has  not  one  mark  on 
his  body  or  face.  In  average  life,  he  is  a  good-looking,  rather 
gentle,  pleasant  man.  It  was  a  very  interesting  sight  to  have 
seen.  From  what  the  gardener  said  there  is  no  doubt  that  the 
men  who  sing  and  play,  mesmerize  the  others;  and  when  they 
pass  into  a  trance,  some  leader  gets  up  and  whispers  into  the  ear 
of  the  subject  what  he  is  to  do,  and  he  has  to  do  it.  He  says  that 
each  in  turn  fancies  himself  to  be  some  animal.  He,  for  instance, 
always  believes  he  is  a  camel,  and  when  he  is  eating  prickly  pear 
it  is  like  some  lovely  sweet,  and  when  he  lies  on  it,  it  seems  like 
a  bed  of  down.  At  any  other  time  he  dare  not  touch  it.  Two 
Arab  women  came  to  see  the  performance,  the  wife  of  our  elder 
janissary,  and  the  mother  of  the  younger.  They  came  in  a  care- 
fully shut  carriage  with  all  the  blinds  down,  wearing  long  heavy 
veils.  They  tottered  up  the  steps  in  shoes  rather  like  those  of 
Chinese  women,  and  into  the  house,  where  I  received  them.  They 
unveiled  in  front  of  me,  of  course.  They  went  all  over  the  house 
when  the  performance  was  over,  and  examined  the  dressing-table 
in  my  bedroom  with  much  interest.  They  had  never  been  to 
Marsa  before  in  their  Hves,  and  both  were  by  no  means  young 
women.  ..." 

At  this  party,  if  I  remember  rightly,  we  definitely  made  the 
acquaintance  of  a  rather  remarkable  American  lady,  Mrs.  E  , 


328 


THE  STORY  OF  MY  LIFE 


who  for  nearly  two  years  afterwards  was  a  source  of  mystifica- 
tion, interest,  amusement,  and  some  anxiety,  to  us  and  to  other 
residents  in  Tunis  and  elsewhere. 

Mrs.  E  was  nice-looking  and  not  particularly  "American" 

in  accent  or  modes.  She  spoke  English,  that  is  to  say,  more  like 
an  English  woman ;  though  her  fluent  French  had  the  American 
accent  which  had  left  her  English  pronunciation.  She  was  first 
noticed  as  the  guest  of  the  French  minister-resident  and  his  wife. 
She  had  come  to  Tunis,  it  was  said,  for  a  fortnight's  visit  in  the 
autumn  of  1897;  but  as  the  autumn  wore  on  into  winter  she 
showed  no  sign  of  going,  rather  a  decided  intention  of  stopping. 
All  this  time  she  was  a  guest  at  the  Residency,  either  in  Tunis,  or 
out  where  we  lived,  at  the  Marsa.  She  came  to  our  extraordi- 
nary garden  party  on  Boxing  Day,  and  I  noted  her  prompt  as- 
sistance to  my  wife  in  managing  the  shattered  nerves  of  the 
Maltese  ladies,  when  there  was  a  danger  of  a  panic-stricken  run 
towards  the  private  railway  station. 

That  led  decidedly  to  our  making  her  acquaintance  and  real- 
izing who  she  was :  the  daughter  of  a  famous  head  of  a  college  in 
the  United  States,  whose  acquaintance  had  been  made  by  Mons. 
Millet  in  some  such  year  as  1877,  when  he  was  sent  by  the  French 
Government  to  compile  a  report  on  American  education.  Since 
that  time  she  had  married  a  man  of  means  and  had  become  the 
mother  of  two  nice  children — as  we  afterwards  pronounced  them 
to  be — a  boy  between  fourteen  and  fifteen  and  a  girl  of  twelve  to 
thirteen. 

A  month  after  the  Boxing  Day  party  we  heard  that  her  very 
long  visit  to  the  Millets  had  come  to  an  end,  and  that  her  children 
had  joined  her  from  Switzerland,  and  together  they  were  living 
near  Carthage  in  a  rather  ramshackle  fashion.  The  go-betweens 
of  gossip  further  informed  us  that  Mme.  Millet,  though  remain- 
ing to  the  end  of  their  intercourse  polite,  had  grown  heartily  sick 
of  her.  Mons.  Millet  was  deemed  to  be  no  less  so,  but  had  such 
a  kindly  nature  that  he  was  less  disposed  to  show  his  weariness  of 
spirit  and  surfeited  hospitality.  (He  afterwards  told  me  that  he 
had  met  her  in  Paris  in  the  summer  of  1897,  and  in  remembrance 


THE  STORY  OF  MY  LIFE 


329 


of  her  father's  hospitaHty  in  the  United  States  of  long  ago,  had 
heedlessly  said,  "If  you  come  over  to  Tunis  to  visit  your  old 
friend,  Mme.  Aubert,  pray  come  and  see  us  also."  Mrs.  E.'s 
alleged  school  friend,  the  American  wife  of  the  French  Director- 
General  of  Tunisian  Railways,  however  gave  her  somewhat  short 
shrift  when  she  did  arrive;  so  she  had  planted  herself  on  the 
Millets.) 

At  first  we  found  her  very  amusing.  She  sketched  well  in 
water  colors,  she  was  very  instructed  and  wrote  vivid  descriptions 
of  Tunisian  life  and  scenery  for  American  papers.  But — a  la 
longue — she  became  fatiguing,  especially  as  she  evinced  an  affec- 
tion we  did  not  reciprocate  and  a  strong  desire  to  be  asked  to 
come  and  stay. 

Then  her  children  joined  her,  and  conversely  we  and  most 
other  people  took  a  liking  to  them.  The  little  girl — who  did  not 
look  her  twelve-thirteen  years — was  a  really  marvelous  violinist. 
She  read  music  at  sight  with  astonishing  accuracy  and  played 
quite  delightfully.  The  boy  was  a  fine-looking  young  fellow, 
uninteresting  at  his  present  age,  too  much  like  the  average  Eng- 
lish schoolboy  who  thinks  of  nothing  beyond  school  games ;  but 
with  a  satisfactory  physique  and  disposition.  Our  relations  with 
them  ripened,  so  that  at  length  we  asked  the  girl  to  stay  and  bring 
her  violin.  The  boy  also  came  at  different  periods.  But  these 
amenities  towards  the  close  of  two  years  were  interrupted  by 
the  mother  pressing  us  to  adopt  her  girl  as  our  daughter.  This 
was  a  length  towards  which  we  had  no  desire  to  proceed,  much  as 
I  enjoyed  the  violin  playing.  The  demeanor  of  the  child  had 
about  it  something  tragic.  She  was  utterly  unlike  her  mother; 
reserved,  delicate,  and  with  a  proper  pride  in  herself,  and  I  think 
she  had  an  afifection  for  her  father,  and  could  not  understand  her 
mother's  erratic  separation  from  her  spouse. 

What  happened  to  them  immediately  after  we  left  Tunis  we 
did  not  know,  but  three  and  a  half  years  afterwards  I  had  a  more 
consoling  glimpse  as  to  their  fortunes.  I  was  visiting  Ireland  and 
of  all  parts  of  Ireland  the  coldly  hostile  College  of  Maynooth.  I 
had  been  staying  with  Lord  Mayo  and  was  driven  over  by  him  to 


330 


THE  STORY  OF  MY  LIFE 


this  center  of  Irish  Cathohcity,  duly  provided  with  letters  of  in- 
troduction. I  took  my  luggage  with  me  and  asked  leave  to 
deposit  it  in  one  of  the  lodges  against  my  departure  for  Dublin. 
The  Principal  of  Maynooth  had  invited  me  to  come  and  see  the 
College  with  the  purpose  of  describing  it  in  the  Daily  Graphic; 
yet  I  felt  the  invitation  lacking  in  cordiality,  and  the  day  assigned 
turned  out  to  be  forbidding  in  weather  in  the  gloomy  month  of 
November. 

On  my  arrival  there,  after  ceremonies,  introductions,  and  hand- 
shaking, I  noticed  a  pleasant-faced  young  man  smoking  a  cig- 
arette on  the  outskirts  of  the  group  of  professors.    He  came 

forward.    "My  name  is  Eugene  O'  .   I  am  an  American  in 

reality,  but  my  family  is  Irish.  I  have  a  house  within  easy 
automobile  ride  of  here  and  I  heard  from  one  of  the  professors 
you  were  coming  to-day  to  visit  this  college — so  I  came  over — 
hoping  to  get  speech  of  you.  ...  I  wondered  whether  you 
would  come  and  lunch  with  me,  after  you  have  seen  this  place? 
You  and  your  wife  were  very  kind  several  years  ago  in  Tunis 
to  some  distant  relations  or  connections  of  mine,  and  I  thought 
you  might  like  to  have  news  of  them.  ..." 

"Not  Mrs.  E  ?"  I  replied,  with  a  sense  of  apprehension. 

"Just  so.   Mrs.  E  .  But  don't  be  alarmed !   She  isn't  with 

me.  I'm  not  her  relation,  but  her  husband's,  poor  chap.  I 
thought  you  might  like  to  know  all  was  well  with  her  boy  and 
girl ;  that  was  all." 

I  visited  Maynooth  in  detail  and  drove  away  with  the  Ameri- 
can Irishman  in  his  motor,  one  of  the  earliest  introduced  into 
Ireland.  He  transported  me  to  a  magnificent  house  about  ten 
miles  from  Dublin  where  one  might  really  forget  one  was  in  dis- 
tressed Ireland.  The  house  was  a  former  residence  of  an  eight- 
eenth century  Speaker  of  the  Irish  House  of  Commons,  in  the 
best  style  of  that  Irish  Golden  Age.  The  gardens  were  exquisite, 
even  in  the  month  of  November.  The  comfort  inside  was  per- 
fect. The  house  was  subtly  warmed.  There  were  superb  conser- 
vatories blended  with  its  architecture.  The  luncheon  quietly 
served  in  one  of  them  was  a  delicate  feast.    The  bedroom  pre- 


THE  STORY  OF  MY  LIFE 


331 


pared  for  me — for  I  yielded  almost  without  a  hesitation  to  the 
invitation  to  say  a  few  days — was  a  dream  of  quiet  comfort. 

After  luncheon  my  host  told  me  that  the  E  's  father  was 

a  great  invalid,  but  that  at  his  request  he  had  seen  to  the  welfare 

of  his  children.    He  had  provided  for  Mrs.  E         so  that  she 

might  not  trespass  on  people's  hospitality,  had  sent  filie — the  boy 
— to  an  English  college  and  placed  the  clever  little  girl  in  charge 
of  a  French  governess-companion  in  Paris  where  she  was  being 
taught  music  to  satisfy  the  demands  of  her  talent.  Their  father 
having  become  a  great  invalid,  he,  my  host,  would  henceforth 
look  after  these  two  young  persons.  It  would  only  bore  me,  he 
said,  if  he  told  me  why.  I  was  looking  very  tired  and  had  obvi- 
ously been  unwell.  He  would  now  impose  on  me  a  complete 
rest,  if  I  would  give  myself  a  short  holiday.  .  .  .  He  would 
show  me  a  little  of  Ireland  in  his  motor — his  automobile,  as  he 
called  it. 

And  he  did.  And,  as  has  usually  been  my  fate,  I  never  met  this 
charming  personage  again,  in  after  life.  I  encountered  M.  Millet 
in  Paris  in  1905.   He  told  me  he  was  at  last,  after  this  lapse  of 

time,  able  to  laugh  at  the  memory  of  Mrs.  E  and  her  imposed 

visit  of  three  months  in  Tunis.  She  now  lived,  he  said,  in  Switz- 
erland, attending  perpetual  conferences  as  soon  as  they  were 
organized  and  held ;  and  that  her  daughter  in  Paris  was  develop- 
ing into  a  musical  prodigy.    I  wonder? 

In  Tunis  1898  was  an  anxious  year.  The  episode  of  Colonel 
Marchand's  walk  across  Equatorial  Africa  from  French  Nigeria 
to  Fashoda,  and  the  challenge  thrown  down  by  the  French  Colo- 
nial Office  and  Army  opinion  to  contest  with  Great  Britain  the 
mastership  of  the  Egyptian  Sudan,  had  its  reverberations  in 
Tunisia.  We  came  so  near  to  war  with  France,  that  prepara- 
tions had  to  be  made  in  all  directions  to  attack  her  if  she  forced 
the  struggle  on  us,  and  she  was  felt  to  be  at  her  weakest  in 
Tunisia. 

The  Turks  and  Moors  wanted  their  independence,  even  if  they 
did  not  deserve  it,  and  looked  eagerly  to  Great  Britain  to  secure 


332 


THE  STORY  OF  MY  LIFE 


this  if  France  was  worsted  in  the  struggle.  Though  the  last  thing 
we  desired  was  war  with  France,  we  felt  the  French  contention 
of  the  right  to  interfere  in  Egypt  and  the  Egyptian  Sudan  unrea- 
sonable and  unsustainable.  The  whole  contest  of  sixteen  years 
was  focussed  in  the  operations  of  Marchand  at  Fashoda  after 
Kitchener  had  taken  Khartum. 

Mons.  Millet  saw  the  unreasonableness  of  his  Government's 
flamboyant  action,  and  so  perhaps  did  most  of  the  French  civil 
officials  in  Tunis;  but  the  military  were  hotly  in  favor  of  war 
with  England.  I  avoided  personal  relations  with  the  officers  as 
much  as  possible,  so  that  no  disagreeable  incident  might  ensue; 
though  to  do  this  I  had  to  restrict  my  rides  and  drives  since  I 
was  credited  with  an  intention  of  spying  on  the  French  defences. 
As  a  matter  of  fact,  after  this  long  interval  of  time,  I  think  I 
may  say,  without  indiscretion,  that  I  had  furnished  our  Govern- 
ment and  the  War  Office  with  all  possible  information  regarding 
French  defences  of  this  Regency.  I  had  realized  the  resemblance 
of  Bizerta  to  Santiago,  and  sincerely  hoped  the  French  Mediter- 
ranean fleet  would  be  so  fatuous  as  to  shut  itself  up  in  this  bottle 
with  an  easily  obstructed  neck. 

Malta,  to  put  it  shortly,  would  have  solved  the  Tunisian  ques- 
tion from  the  point  of  view  of  disadvantage  to  the  French,  and 
to  make  this  quite  clear,  I  had  paid  a  very  interesting  visit  to 
Malta.  At  the  same  time  my  ideas,  sympathies  and  outlook  were 
vehemently  adverse  to  any  Franco-British  War,  provoked  solely 
by  the  hotheads  at  the  French  Colonial  Office.  Millet  and  I  saw 
the  question  in  the  same  light.  I  had  given  unstinted  praise  to 
French  administrative  skill  in  my  reports  on  Tunis.  I  reminded 
him  how  strenuously  in  1880  I  had  taken  up  the  French  cause 
and  defended  it  in  the  English  Press. 

At  the  supreme  critical  moment  I  had  an  interview  with  him 
in  his  house  in  Tunis,  and  we  arranged  that  if  war  did  break  out, 
I  should  take  his  place  there,  since  the  French  had  decided  that 
they  could  not  defend  the  eastern  part  of  the  Regency  against 
the  attacks  of  our  Fleet.  If  war  broke  out,  therefore,  he  would 
retire  by  the  railway  to  the  west,  leaving  everything  in  his  house 


THE  STORY  OF  MY  LIFE 


333 


in  my  charge.  However,  the  disaster  was  averted,  thanks,  in  the 
main,  to  the  French  Foreign  Minister — Delcasse. 

The  next  year,  1899,  our  relations  became  enormously  im- 
proved. My  wife  opened  the  New  Year  with  a  several-times- 
postponed  Fancy  Dress  Ball,  which  the  French  element  attended 
extensively.  The  French  Minister  reciprocated  by  similar  enter- 
tainments, and  the  good  relations  were  consummated,  perhaps 
half-accidentally,  by  the  arrival  in  May,  of  the  Princess  of  Wales 
in  the  Royal  Yacht  Osborne. 

This  visit  was  quite  a  surprise,  and  seemed  to  be  due,  in  the 
main,  to  the  desire  of  Queen  Alexandra  to  question  me  as  to  the 
circumstances  of  the  death  of  a  favorite  godson  of  hers  in  Cen- 
tral Africa — Lieutenant  Edward  Alston.  But  it  added  appreci- 
ably in  its  results  to  the  growth  of  good  feeling.  The  Princess 
was  accompanied  by  her  daughters,  the  afterwards-Queen  of 
Norway  and  Princess  Victoria.  Any  guest  more  easy  and  de- 
lightful to  entertain  than  these  two  queens-^as  they  afterwards 
became — I  can  not  imagine.  They  made  so  light  of  difficulties, 
and  so  much  of  anything  that  was  done  for  their  comfort  and 
entertainment.  They  even  won  the  affectionate  caresses  and  loud 
greetings  of  our  naughty  baboon — Dinduna,^  who  was  allowed 
to  take  tea  with  them  in  the  garden,  where  she  conducted  herself 
with  almost  unnatural  propriety  and  absence  of  greed. 

The  Princess  of  Wales  went  on  several  expeditions  to  photo- 
graph Moorish  arches  and  Roman  ruins  or  relics  of  Carthage. 
She  gave  a  sumptuous  luncheon  to  British  residents  at  an  hotel  in 
Tunis  itself,  and  enjoyed  one — I  hope — at  the  French  Residency. 

The  French  attached  to  her  a  guard  of  native  soldiers,  whom 
she  rewarded  afterwards  by  a  lavish  distribution  of  British  gold. 
Every  one  who  deserved  any  notice  was  noticed  so  adroitly  and 
with  such  a  use  of  the  right  word,  either  in  English  or  French ; 

^Dinduna  came  from  somewhere  unknown  in  the  Sahara  Desert,  and  was 
bought  by  me  in  1897.  She  had  an  intelligence  almost  human,  and  became 
the  center  of  many  stories,  some  of  them  apocryphal,  and  some  genuine. 
When  I  quitted  Tunis  to  go  to  Uganda,  I  placed  her  in  the  Zoological 
Gardens,  where  she  lived  for  some  years,  always  recognizing  me  or  my 
wife  when  we  went  to  visit  her. 


334 


THE  STORY  OF  MY  LIFE 


and  the  visit  ended  without  any  one  being  over-fatigued  or  disap- 
pointed. 

A  few  days  after  she  had  left  I  received  a  long  cipher  telegram 
from  the  Foreign  Office,  offering  me  the  Special  Commissioner- 
ship  in  Uganda  for  two  years,  at  a  salary  of  £2,800  a  year  and 
an  allowance  of  £500  a  year  for  a  Military  Secretary.  I  was  to 
be  given  the  military  rank  of  Commander-in-Chief  in  the  War 
Office  List,  so  as  to  make  it  conclusive  that  I  could  dominate  the 
British  general  officers  who  had  not  managed  very  well  to  sup- 
press the  mutiny  of  the  Sudanese  soldiers.  I  had  to  make  up  my 
mind  somewhat  quickly  to  accept  the  offer. 

My  wife  and  I  had  a  long  and  anxious  discussion  over  this 
telegram,  when  it  had  been  decoded.  We  had  become  very  happy 
in  Tunis,  even  though  the  salary  and  allowances  did  not  equal  our 
expenses.  The  conditions  of  the  work  expected  of  me  in  Uganda 
would  be  such  that  on  a  special  commission  she  could  not  accom- 
pany me.  The  railway  approach  in  those  days  was  still  a  long 
way  of¥  the  shores  of  the  Nyanza.  The  conditions  of  the  country 
were  still  very  war-like ;  there  would  be  the  dread  of  again  incur- 
ring Black-water  fever.  But  of  the  interest  of  the  commission 
and  of  the  area  to  be  visited,  there  could  be  no  doubt.  The  jour- 
ney in  its  ramifications  should  enable  me  to  go  a  long  way  towards 
completing  my  researches  into  the  Bantu  languages,  and  it  might 
lead  to  my  being  able  (as  occurred  nearly  twenty  years  after- 
wards) to  publish  the  conclusive  work  on  the  subject. 

I  might  find  many  things  that  were  new  in  the  African  fauna 
and  flora,  solve  many  of  the  questions  raised  by  Stanley  in  his 
last  journey.  I  do  not  think  for  a  moment  I  contemplated  refus- 
ing, much  as  I  realized  the  risks  to  life  and  the  possibility  of 
failure.  And  although  this  tremendous  journey — as  it  proved  to 
be — brought  to  a  close  my  public  service,  I  still  did  not  regret 
having  quitted  Tunis,  to  make  it.  It  taught  me  such  a  lot,  as 
well  as  the  reading  public ;  and  enabled  me  to  complete  so  much 
laborious  study  begun  in  my  youth. 

So  we  hurriedly  packed  our  transportable  goods,  placed  Mr. 
Lascelles  in  charge,  and  returned  to  England  at  the  end  of  June, 


THE  STORY  OF  MY  LIFE 


335 


1899.  As  we  both  felt  very  over-worked  and  excited,  we  went 
for  a  fortnight  to  an  hotel  at  Seaford  in  Sussex,  and  I  spent 
enjoyable  days  painting  its  wonderful  cliff  scenery,  or  sailing 
along  the  coast  between  Newhaven  and  Cuckmere  Haven.  Sea- 
ford  in  those  days  was  a  delightful  place  for  quaintness  and 
scenery,  but  I  believe  long  since  then  it  has  been  spoiled  and 
made  ugly  by  building  lodging  houses  and  establishing  golf  clubs, 
and  by  all  the  other  causes  which  have  united  in  making  the  coast 
of  Sussex  hideous  to  the  eye  and  heartrending  to  the  lover  of 
natural  beauty. 

Finally,  when  the  composition  of  my  traveling  staff  had  been 
settled  (I  had  declined  a  military  secretary,  but  had  asked  instead 
for  the  transference  of  Mr.  J.  F.  Cunningham,  Secretary  to  the 
British  Central  Africa  Administration,  who  was  to  join  me  from 
Nyasaland)  I  went  with  my  wife  to  Venice,  to  enjoy  a  fort- 
night's holiday  there  in  September.  The  Bishop  of  Ely  in  those 
days,  who  was  the  husband  of  Sir  Percy  Anderson's  sister,  had 
a  great  love  of  Venice,  and  a  very  considerable  interest  in  its  his- 
tory and  architecture.  He  and  his  wife  permitted  themselves  the 
one  little  luxury  of  rooms  on  the  first  floor  of  a  house  overlooking 
the  Grand  Canal;  and  resorted  to  Venice  whenever  they  could 
take  a  holiday.  Lady  Alwyne  Compton,  his  wife,  was  a  walking 
guide-book  of  Venice,  besides  being  in  many  other  ways  a  re- 
markably interesting  woman.  Her  talk  was  like  reading  the  best 
book  of  memoirs  of  the  nineteenth  century  that  you  could  get 
from  a  library.  Every  one  of  those  days  in  Venice  was  a  day 
of  exceptional  bliss  in  regard  to  weather,  food  and  intense  inter- 
est. Edward  Clarke,  one  of  my  Foreign  Office  friends,  was  there 
too,  so  that  I  was  not  out  of  touch  with  Foreign  Office  business. 

The  Bishop  had  two  gondolas  with  their  crews  on  hire.  We 
went  on  sketching  picnics,  we  visited  the  mainland  on  the  west, 
and  the  long  islands  on  the  east,  drank  chocolate  or  ate  ices  in  the 
Square  of  St.  Mark's,  looked  up  such  of  the  scenery  of  Casa- 
nova's memoirs  of  the  eighteenth  century  as  remained  unaltered; 
and  amongst  other  interesting  things  saw  an  exhibition  of  Tur- 
ner's water-color  paintings,  especially  those  connected  with 


336 


THE  STORY  OF  MY  LIFE 


Venice.  For  the  first  time  in  my  life  I  gazed  at  paintings  and 
drawings  by  Turner  that  I  could  genuinely  and  unaffectedly 
admire.  Some  of  the  most  noteworthy  among  them  I  had  never 
seen  before. 

From  this  feast  of  beauty  and  these  thrills  of  an  exciting  his- 
tory I  had  to  tear  myself  away,  and  proceed  to  Marseilles,  to 
embark  on  a  French  steamer  and  journey  to  Zanzibar ;  but  the 
voyage  was  a  singularly  pleasant  one,  thanks  mainly  to  the  Cap- 
tain and  the  calm  weather. 


CHAPTER  XV 


The  story  of  my  two  years'  work  in  the  Uganda  Protectorate 
has  been  told  with  some  completeness  in  my  book  on  that  subject.^ 
Our  interest  in  Uganda  commenced  with  the  rumor  of  its 
existence  given  by  Burton  at  the  close  of  the  'fifties,  in  his  Lake 
Regions  of  Central  Africa.  He  had  sent  Speke  northwards  from 
Tabora  to  investigate  the  stories  of  a  large  lake  lying  under  the 
Equator.  Speke  had  found  the  south  shore  of  this  lake,  seen  its 
wide  waters  stretching  indefinitely  northwards,  had  jumped — 
rightly — to  the  guess  that  here  was  the  main  origin  of  the  Nile, 
and  had  made  as  hurried  a  return  to  England  as  possible  to 
organize  a  second  mission  of  discovery.  Speke's  attitude  in  the 
matter  had  caused  a  breach  in  his  relations  with  Burton.  Burton 
was  jealous,  Speke  was  heedless  of  this  jealousy,  and  did  much, 
consciously  or  unconsciously,  to  fan  it.  Speke  returned  to  East 
Africa  with  Captain  J.  F.  Grant  as  a  companion.  He  had  a  well- 
equipped  expedition,  and  made  his  way  without  any  very  serious 
difficulty,  to  the  Victoria  Nyanza,  and  with  some  gaps  in  his  sur- 
vey of  its  shores  (which  were  not  fully  filled  till  twenty  years 
ago),  he  reached  the  country  of  Karagwe  to  the  west  of  the  lake. 
He  caught  and  recorded  a  distant  glimpse  of  the  snow-crowned 
volcanoes,  between  Lake  Kivu  and  Lake  Edward.  He  entered 
the  remarkable  country  of  Uganda,  which  he  further  stamped 
with  its  incorrect  SwahiH  name — (for  it  is  in  reality  called  by 
its  people — Buganda),  under  the  tyrannous  rule  of  its  long- 
descended  monarch — Mutesa.  King  Mutesa  intelligently  com- 
prehended the  object  of  his  quest,  and  sent  him  to  the  point  nearly 
in  the  center  of  the  Victoria  Nyanza's  northern  coast  where  the 
waters  of  the  lake  issue  as  the  Nile,  and  plunge  down  the  mag- 
nificent cascades  of  Jinja. 

1  The  Uganda  Protectorate,  vols.  i.  and  ii.    Messrs.  Hutchinson  &  Co. 

337 


338 


THE  STORY  OF  MY  LIFE 


Speke  and  Grant  were  anticipated  in  the  discovery  of  the  Al- 
bert Nyanza  by  Samuel  Baker — rewarded  for  his  service  to 
Geography  by  a  knighthood.  Baker,  however,  met  them  some- 
where near  at  hand  and  furnished  them  with  news  and  supplies ; 
so  it  was  with  light  hearts  they  descended  the  Nile  and  returned 
home,  Speke  afterwards  to  die  by  a  gun-accident  at  his  home  in 
South  Somerset. 

Uganda  was  next  reached  and  enquired  into  by  Belgian  and 
English  employes  in  the  service  of  the  Egyptian  Sudan  Govern- 
ment. Stanley's  visit,  however,  in  1876,  was  a  noteworthy  event, 
quickly  followed  by  the  coming  of  British  missionaries  of  the 
Church  Missionary  Society;  while  they  again  were  joined  by 
French  Roman  Catholic  missionaries  of  Cardinal  Lavigerie's 
"White  Fathers."  Through  the  'eighties  the  missionaries  strug- 
gled with  both  success  and  failure  to  evangelize  Uganda. 

In  the  early  'nineties  the  Imperial  British  East  Africa  Com- 
pany began  to  assume  the  rights  of  its  charter  over  Equatorial 
East  Africa,  and  to  contemplate  interference  in  Uganda  in  order 
to  put  down  the  disastrous  civil  war  which  had  commenced  there 
under  the  mis-government  of  Mwanga  and  Anglo-French  mis- 
sionary rivalries. 

The  next  most  noteworthy  event  was  the  incoming  of  Lugard,^ 
who  had  first  sprung  into  fame  in  his  attempt  to  solve  the  Arab 
difficulty  at  the  north  end  of  Lake  Nyasa.  Lugard  laid  very 
solidly  the  foundations  of  British  control  over  Uganda. 

Lord  Rosebery  decided  in  1894  to  recommence  enquiry,  rein- 
force a  British  Protectorate,  and  make  it  possible  by  railway  com- 
munication from  the  coast.  But  in  1897  broke  out  the  disastrous 
mutiny  in  the  Sudanese  regiments  which  Lugard  had  originally 
admitted  from  the  Egyptian  Sudan.  The  Sudanese  revolt  had 
roused  other  hostile  opposition  against  European  interference, 
and  the  whole  question  was  rendered  "ugly"  by  the  Anglo-French 
rivalry.  The  French  Catholic  missionaries  in  those  days  were 
working  consciously  or  unconsciously  with  Marchand  and  the 
French  Colonial  Office  in  their  resolve  to  bring  Uganda  under 
French  influence.  So  embittered  did  they  become  against  our 
^  Sir  Frederick  Lugard. 


THE  STORY  OF  MY  LIFE  339 

"Protestantism"  that  they  even  in  default  of  France  coquetted 
with  Germany,  though  Germany  had  cut  herself  ofif  from  Uganda 
extension  by  a  treaty  with  England.  But  a  very  powerful  person 
on  the  English  side  was  the  Prime  Minister  of  Uganda — Apolo  ^ 
Kagwa.  The  degenerate  king  Mwanga  (son  of  Mutesa)  had 
become  an  open  enemy  of  the  British,  and  had  at  last  been  taken 
prisoner  and  exiled.  His  infant  son  reigned  instead,  under  three 
native  Regents. 

When  I  reached  Uganda  proper  at  the  end  of  1899,  though  the 
administration  was  halting,  embarrassed,  and  watchful,  the  main 
issue  had  been  decided.  The  Anglican  Protestant  party  had  been 
victorious;  the  French  missionaries  were  now  inclined  (though  a 
little  sulkily)  to  recognize  the  fact;  and  although  the  mutiny  of 
the  Sudanese  still  continued  on  the  banks  of  the  Nile  north  of 
Unyoro,  and  several  wild  Nilotic  tribes  in  the  northeast  of  the 
Protectorate  were  in  arms  or  banditry  against  us  (fascinated  by 
the  appearance  of  copper  telegraph  wires,  which  meant  to  them 
great  wealth),  peace  for  the  whole  Protectorate  was  in  sight. 
How  this  was  brought  about  is  told  in  my  book.  I  considered 
that  the  main  difficulty  of  my  undertaking  was  the  negotiation 
and  conclusion  of  an  agreement  with  the  kingdom  of  Buganda. 
This  had  to  be  negotiated  with  the  three  Regents,  of  whom  the 
premier  was  Apolo  Kagwa.  They  were  hard  and  sagacious  bar- 
gainers. 

Our  negotiations,  it  might  be  observed,  were  carried  on  in  the 
Swahili  language.^  Swahili  is  a  Bantu  tongue,  resembling  Lu- 
ganda  much  as  French  does  Italian.  Trade  with  the  coast  had 
implanted  the  speech  of  Zanzibar  in  the  Uganda  towns  for  thirty 

1  This  name — spelled  as  pronounced — was  the  Greek  Apollos  mentioned  in 
St.  Paul's  Epistles.    Kagwa  was  his  native  name. 

2  At  Christmas,  1899,  occurred  my  first  great  meeting  with  the  notabilities 
of  the  country  at  the  native  capital  Kampala.  The  military  authorities  who 
then  dominated  the  place  proposed  that  I  should  make  a  speech  in  English 
which  should  be  translated  by  interpreters ;  but  I  pursued  my  own  idea 
of  an  explanatory  discourse  as  to  my  position,  first  and  foremost,  in  Swahili; 
so  that  it  might  be  understood  by  the  masses  of  the  natives.  Then  I 
addressed  the  British  officials  and  missionaries  in  English,  and  the  French 
missionaries  in  French.  So  that  every  one  came  to  understand  quickly  the 
object  of  my  mission. 


340 


THE  STORY  OF  MY  LIFE 


or  forty  years.  At  any  rate,  all  the  leading  men  of  the  country 
spoke  it  and  understood  it. 

But  when  all  the  points  in  the  treaty  had  been  settled  by  agree- 
ment, the  text  was  drawn  up  in  English  and  in  Luganda,  and  both 
versions  were  signed. 

In  the  matter  of  translation  I  had  the  very  effective  help  of  the 
English  missionary  Bishop  of  Uganda  (Tucker)  and  of  Arch- 
deacon Walker,  and  their  translations  were  criticized  and  ad- 
justed by  the  three  Regents. 

The  signing  of  this  treaty  was  made  a  great  occasion  at  Kam- 
pala. Treaties  similar  in  text  and  arrangement  were  later  on 
negotiated  with  the  Toro  and  Ankole  chiefs,  and  with  the  far- 
famed  kingdom  of  Unyoro. 

Unyoro  (or  Bunyoro,  as  it  is  really  called)  was  at  one  time 
more  powerful  and  extensive  than  Buganda,  but  from  the  begin- 
ning of  the  'sixties  it  had  shown  itself  far  more  opposed  to  Euro- 
pean penetration.  Kabarega,  its  king,  had  often  proved  cruel  or 
impracticable  in  his  relations  with  the  Sudanese  Administration 
or  with  European  explorers.  After  his  defeat  his  country  had 
joined  the  recalcitrant  element  in  Uganda  in  its  endeavor  to  repel 
the  British.  It  had,  however,  been  virtually  conquered  by  the  tri- 
umphant, Protestant,  Baganda  chiefs;  and  when  I  arrived  on  the 
scene  and  its  old  king  was  a  prisoner  on  the  coast,  its  new  king 
was  a  minor.  His  people  were  within  a  much  reduced  territory, 
willing  to  accept  any  reasonable  terms.  (The  celebrated,  long- 
lived  old  king — Kabarega — died  at  Jinja — the  Nile  outlet — on 
his  return  to  his  country  in  May,  1923,  about  eighty  years  of 
age.) 

Other  agreements  were  made  with  regard  to  Busoga,  a  large 
country  immediately  east  of  the  Nile,  where  it  quits  the  Victoria 
Nyanza.  The  Basoga  were  a  race  nearly  allied  in  blood  and  lan- 
guage with  the  Baganda.  The  boundaries  of  the  whole  Protec- 
torate were  defined  as  far  north  as  the  meeting  place  with  the 
Sudan  Administration,  and  as  far  east  as  the  great  Rift  Valley 
of  East  Africa.^ 

^At  the  conclusion  of  my  special  commission,  the  eastern  Province  of 
Uganda  was  transferred  to  the  East  Africa  Protectorate. 


THE  STORY  OF  MY  LIFE 


341 


When  I  returned  to  my  headquarters  at  Entebbe,  jutting  with 
several  peninsulas  into  the  lake  (which  beautiful  place  I  had  made 
the  administrative  capital  of  the  Protectorate),  I  suddenly  be- 
came very  ill  with  Black-water  fever.  It  took  me  a  fortnight  to 
struggle  through  this  malady.  When  this  was  done,  as  on  previ- 
ous occasions  in  Central  Africa,  instead  of  feeling  very  weak,  I 
felt  in  many  ways  much  better  and  more  vigorous,  though  I  had 
nearly  died  in  the  violence  of  the  first  attack.  So  I  decided  that 
my  next  great  effort  after  politics  should  be  discovery.  I  set  out 
for  the  snow  mountains  known  as  Ruwenzori. 

The  journey  thither  led  me  through  strikingly  beautiful  scenes. 
Firstly,  tropical  forests  of  southern  Buganda  almost  as  wonder- 
ful as  those  of  eastern  Sierra  Leone  and  Liberia.  Raphia  palms 
of  extravagant  growth;  climbing  calamus  palms  which  might 
reach  to  above  the  summits  of  the  highest  trees  at  three  hundred 
feet;  oil  palms  with  their  trunks  a  wonderful  fernery,  or  the 
abode  of  parasitic  aroids  with  amazingly  designed  or  decorated 
leaves  and  extraordinary  flower-spathes. 

There  was  a  wild  banana  of  one  or  more  species;  it  had  sin- 
gularly beautiful  fronds  of  grass-green  with  red  stems;  there 
were  Mussaendas  with  bracts  of  velvet  white  or  of  a  brilliant 
crimson,  surrounding  the  yellow  flowers.  This  entrancing  beauty 
of  vegetation  was  not  easily  photographed  in  those  days,  and 
could  not  be  well  illustrated  in  my  Uganda  book.  Beyond  these 
forests  lay  bold  grassy  downs,  and  beyond  the  downs  one  came 
within  sight  of  some  vague  portent,  in  reality  the  mass  of  Ruwen- 
zori with  its  snow  peaks  obstinately  cut  off  from  view  by  heavy 
clouds. 

To  the  south  we  would  see  glimpses  of  open  water,  Dweru,  one 
of  the  slowly-drying-up  lakes  connected  with  Lake  Edward. 

I  reached  at  last  the  fortified  station  established  originally  by 
Sir  Gerald  Portal's  brother,  near  the  northern  end  of  the  Ruwen- 
zori range,  and  the  marked  descent  towards  the  Albert  Nyanza. 
When  first  established  this  had  been  jokingly  called  Fort  Gerry, 
but  the  site  had  turned  out  to  be  well-chosen  for  health  and 
strategy,  so  I  thought  it  worthy  of  the  more  serious  name  Fort 


342 


THE  STORY  OF  MY  LIFE 


Portal,  and  made  it  the  administrative  capital  of  the  Toro  dis- 
trict. 

The  young  king  of  Toro — Kasagama — came  promptly  to  make 
my  acquaintance,  together  with  his  mother  and  family  relations, 
who  were  more  aristocratic  in  appearance  than  himself,  in  that 
they  belonged  to  a  purer  Hima  race,  and  were  more  like  Gala 
women  than  Negresses. 

At  Fort  Portal  I  remained  a  considerable  time  settling  the 
affairs  of  the  Toro  people  and  kingdom.  Toro  was  little  else 
than  the  southern  part  of  Bunyoro. 

The  people  of  Bunyoro,  Toro,  Ankole,  and  the  districts  then 
under  German  protection,  such  as  Karagwe  and  Busui,  were  all 
in  a  way  parts  of  an  ancient  Nyoro  Empire,  which  had  stretched 
from  the  Victoria  Nile  and  the  north  end  of  Lake  Albert  south- 
wards to  the  islands,  peninsulas  and  southern  shores  of  the  Vic- 
toria Nyanza. 

With  the  region  speaking  a  Luganda  tongue  to  the  east  of 
them,  the  languages  of  Toro,  Ankole  and  Bunyoro  were  closely 
allied,  and  yet  quite  distinct,  like  Spanish  and  Italian.  Equally 
similar,  yet  equally  distinct  was  the  Ruanda  language  which  in 
various  dialects  lay  to  the  southwest  of  the  Nyoro  tongues,  and 
continued  north  and  northeast  of  Tanganyika  to  Ujiji. 

In  the  considerable  region  of  Nyoro  speech  the  native  popula- 
tion was  less  fused  than  in  Buganda.  There  was  the  ruling  aris- 
tocracy of  Hima  origin,  much  mixed  with  the  aboriginal  Negro 
in  the  course  of  say — two  thousand — years;  and  yet  here  and 
there  presenting  a  startling  physical  resemblance  to  the  Gala  and 
Somali.  Next  to  them  in  political  importance  came  the  average 
Bantu  Negro;  and  hidden  in  the  forest  and  the  high  mountains 
were  the  Congo  Pygmies. 

Some  of  the  Hima  men  and  women  of  Toro  were  so  pale  in 
complexion  and  "Caucasian"  in  feature,  that  when  I  first  saw 
them  I  took  them  to  be  Egyptian  refugees  from  the  Sudan,  and 
stupefied  them  by  my  questions  in  Arabic. 

All  these  different  and  divergent  types  were  fairly  compre- 
hensively illustrated  in  my  book  on  Uganda.   In  that  book  I  have 


THE  STORY  OF  MY  LIFE 


343 


given  a  full  description  of  my  experiences  on  the  heights  of 
Ruwenzori  and  our  attainment  to  the  snows  and  glaciers  on  the 
eastern  side.  In  my  two  volumes  on  the  Bantu  languages  I  have 
illustrated  the  remarkable  speech  forms  of  this  region,  up  to  the 
verge  of  the  great  Congo  Forest. 

I  discovered  on  the  flanks  of  Ruwenzori  a  fourth  example  of 
what  might  be  termed  "classical"  Bantu,  which,  indeed,  I  num- 
bered 1  of  the  whole  series,  and  regarded  it  in  some  respects  as 
the  most  primitive  and  unspoiled  form  of  Bantu  speech.  This 
was  Lukonjo,  spoken  over  the  southern  half  of  Ruwenzori,  east 
of  the  Semliki  River  and  southwards  round  about  Lake  Edward. 
In  some  respects  this  is  the  most  interesting  of  all  Bantu  lan- 
guages, but  as  it  is  the  tongue  of  a  very  small  population  and 
therefore  not  much  good  for  propaganda,  it  has  been  little  studied 
by  the  missionaries,  who  indeed  had  not  written  it  down  at  all, 
until  I  directed  their  attention  to  it.  But  for  the  purposes  of  edu- 
cation— though  it  is  feared  it  is  too  late  to  make  this  appeal  as  it 
is  nearly  extinct — it  should  have  been  the  most  studied  of  all  the 
Bantu  languages.  The  speech  forms  of  the  northern  half  of 
Ruwenzori  and  thence  into  the  southwest  coastlands  of  the  Albert 
Nyanza  and  the  adjoining  Congo  Forest  are  likewise  of  the  deep- 
est interest  to  philologists.  They  differed  widely  and  sharply 
from  the  classical  Bantu  of  Uganda  and  Bunyoro,  and  are  much 
more  nearly  connected  with  the  Bantu  languages  of  the  southern 
Bahr-al-ghazal  and  of  the  Northwest  Congo  and  northern  Cam- 
eroons. 

In  the  early  part  of  1900  whilst  I  was  residing  at  Entebbe,  I 
received  information  from  the  Belgian  ofiicials  at  the  Congo 
State  Frontier  beyond  Ruwenzori,  that  a  German  had  appeared 
at  their  station  of  Mbeni  at  the  close  of  1899,  and  asked  permis- 
sion to  proceed  thence  into  the  Congo  Forest,  and  engage  twenty 
or  thirty  Congo  Pygmies  to  proceed  with  him  to  figure  at  the 
Paris  Exhibition  of  1900.  Permission  was  refused,  or  at  any 
rate,  decidedly  postponed  until  Lieutenant  Meura  (in  command 
of  Mbeni)  could  consult  with  the  Governor-General  of  the 
Congo  State,  who,  in  those  days,  was  a  personage  living  at  the 


344 


THE  STORY  OF  MY  LIFE 


other  side  of  Africa,  not  easily  communicated  with.  The  Ger- 
man had  seemed  to  acquiesce,  but  shortly  afterwards  disappeared 
into  the  Forest  with  his  caravan.  Lieutenant  Meura,  however, 
heard  that  he  had  engaged  or  more  probably  entrapped  twenty 
to  thirty  Pygmies  and  was  attempting  to  convey  them  across 
country  to  Lake  Albert  and  descend  the  Nile,  or  pass  eastwards 
to  the  coast  through  the  north  of  Uganda. 

I  accordingly  sent  word  to  various  commandants  to  look  out 
for  this  man  and  his  caravan.  He  was  found  and  intercepted. 
Such  of  the  Pygmies  as  remained  with  him  were  taken  away, 
and  brought  to  my  headquarters.  The  German  was  tried  for  his 
ofifense,  and  sentenced  to  a  heavy  fine,  as  the  imprisonment  of 
Europeans  was  not,  at  that  time,  a  convenient  thing. 

The  remnant  of  the  Pygmies — seven  men,  as  far  as  I  remem- 
ber— was  sent  to  me  at  Entebbe,  and  there  they  had  to  stop  until 
I  was  able  to  proceed  to  Ruwenzori,  and  afterwards  convey  them 
to  Mbeni  on  the  Semliki.  They  settled  down  in  the  roughly- 
cleared  "park"  at  the  back  of  my  temporary  house,  a  park  which 
farther  north  and  east,  Mr.  Alexander  Whyte  was  converting 
into  a  very  beautiful  Botanical  Gardens.  The  portion  of  this 
roughly  cleared  space  (wherein  only  the  big  trees  were  left) 
nearest  to  the  vicinity  of  my  house,  had  become  a  sort  of  Zoolog- 
ical Gardens,  with  remarkable  birds  of  prey,  tethered  to  stumps, 
gray  parrots  in  semi-liberty,  pythons,  puff-adders,  and  other 
snakes  in  large  wire  cages. 

A  young  elephant,  allowed  to  roam  where  he  liked,  and  with 
his  companion,  a  young  zebra,  well-behaved  and  not  destructive ; 
tame  bush-buck ;  a  Situtunga  or  water-loving  Tragelaph ;  a  baby 
hippopotamus  were  other  examples  of  the  fauna  therein  shel- 
tered. 

When  the  Pygmies  first  arrived,  we  only  communicated  with 
them  by  signs  and  gestures.  Their  own  speech  I  found  to  be  a 
dialect  of  the  unclassified  Mbuba  or  Momfu  language  (Mbuba 
is  a  language  spoken  by  the  Negroes  of  ordinary  height  in  the 
Congo  Forest,  west  of  the  middle  Semliki  Valley  and  stretching 
thence  towards  the  Aruwimi).  But  they  understood  slightly  the 
Bantu  trade  language  of  northern  Congoland  (Bangala)  which 


THE  STORY  OF  MY  LIFE 


345 


was  spoken  by  runaway  native  soldiers  or  deserters  from  the 
Congo  State. 

This  was  our  only  means  during  the  first  month  of  exchanging 
speech  with  the  Pygmies;  but  most  of  them  began  to  pick  up 
Swahili  with  great  rapidity. 

One  of  these  interesting  little  men  seemed  to  have  met  with 
some  internal  injury  on  his  march  with  the  German  exploiter, 
and  shortly  before  my  departure  for  Ruwenzori,  he  died.  I  had 
him  carefully  buried  in  the  vicinity  of  Entebbe,  in  the  Forest, 
taking  through  my  Natural  History  collector,  Mr.  Doggett,  note 
of  the  site  of  his  grave.  Before  I  started  for  the  west,  I  called 
the  remaining  Pygmies  together,  to  ask  their  opinion  and  wishes. 
I  explained  how  interesting  to  us  was  the  study  of  their  people ; 
how  in  the  principal  town  of  our  Empire,  we  had  a  great  house 
in  which  we  preserved  specimens  of  beasts,  birds,  reptiles  and 
fishes  from  all  parts  of  the  world,  and  how  we  also  tried  to 
illustrate  the  different  types  of  mankind.  Would  they  have  any 
objection  to  the  skeleton  of  their  dead  brother  being  sent  later  on 
to  this  great  house,  where  the  British  people  could  see  him,  and 
compare  him  with  the  skeletons  of  their  own  race?  They  held  a 
council  together,  and  then  one  of  their  number  came  to  say  that 
they  fully  approved  of  the  honor  to  be  conferred  on  their  dead 
brother. 

So  any  reader  of  this  book  can  see  the  skeleton  of  the  Bambute' 
Pygmy,  who  died  at  Entebbe  in  May,  1900,  and  whose  skeleton 
is  among  the  exhibits  in  the  Natural  History  Museum  of  the 
Cromwell  Road. 

In  facial  appearance  he  was  the  most  ape-like  among  my  seven 
guests. 

Accordingly  after  we  had  tried  to  the  uttermost  the  patience 
and  physique  of  our  band  of  Bakonjo  porters,  who  had  ascended 
Ruwenzori  to  the  verge  of  the  snow-level,  and  after  I  had  exam- 
ined, surveyed,  and  portrayed  with  camera  and  pencil,  the  south- 
ern end  of  the  great  mountain  range,  the  northern  shores  of  Lake 
Edward,  we  marched  up  the  right  bank  of  the  Semliki  River  and 
were  ferried  across  in  canoes  to  the  Belgian  station  of  Mbeni. 

Here  I  was  received  by  Lieutenant  Meura  and  his  assistant 


346 


THE  STORY  OF  MY  LIFE 


officer,  Mr.  Eriksson,  a  Swede.  We  settled  up  the  Pygmy  ques- 
tion, and  the  Pygmies,  it  was  arranged,  should  guide  me  to  their 
home  in  the  Forest,  so  that  I  could  see  them  definitely  repatri- 
ated. But  before  I  started  on  the  fascinating  quest  for  new  lan- 
guages, and  a  perception  of  the  marvelous  botany  of  Stanley's 
great  Congo  Forest,  another  problem  presented  itself  for  a  pos- 
sible solution.  The  two  Congo  State  officers  began  to  discuss 
with  me  several  unanswered  questions  regarding  the  Congo  For- 
est fauna.  They  showed  me  photographs  of  undoubted  gorillas 
(after  death),  and  in  those  days  no  one  had  imagined  the  range 
of  the  gorilla  to  extend  from  the  Gaboon  and  the  Cameroons  to 
East  Central  Africa. 

They  revealed  to  me  the  existence  of  certain  new  types  of  mon- 
key, and  sent  guides  with  Mr.  Doggett  or  myself,  so  that  we  were 
actually  able  to  shoot  one  or  two,  or  to  obtain  specimens  of  other 
new  and  remarkable  mammals  from  native  hunters;  but  their 
greatest  puzzle,  the  most  remarkable  creature  they  met  to  dis- 
cuss, was  the  Okapi.  They  did  not  mention  it  by  that  name, 
which  was  used  in  the  local  Bantu  languages.  They  spoke  of  it 
vaguely  as  being  a  species  of  zebra,  or  possibly  something  more 
wonderful,  a  horse  with  three  toes;  a  still  surviving  Hipparion. 
They  advised  me  to  enlist  the  Pygmies  as  guides,  and  told  me 
that  the  direction  of  their  home  in  the  Forest  would  bring  me 
into  the  region  whence  they  occasionally  obtained  through  their 
native  soldiers,  specimens  of  this  strange  creature.  The  Okapis 
were  caught  in  pitfalls,  and  the  examples  of  them  were  seldom 
perfect,  the  flesh  being  separately  presented  for  food.  (It  was 
very  good  eating;  I  was  indeed  supposed  to  have  eaten  at  one 
repast  from  an  Okapi  stew.) 

I  therefore  entered  the  Forest  with  the  keenest  anticipation  of 
discovery.  At  one  place  the  Pygmies  became  excited  and  showed 
me  what  they  declared  were  Okapi  footprints,  but  as  these  were 
two-toed,  and  not  unlike  the  footprint  of  an  Eland,  I  declared 
impatiently  that  I  wanted  something  more  like  the  spoor  of  a 
donkey.  In  one  of  the  villages,  however,  I  found  soldiers  of  the 
Congo  State,  who  had  adapted  the  gaudier  portions  of  Okapi 


THE  STORY  OF  MY  LIFE 


347 


hide  as  bandoliers;  and  these  I  bought  to  send  home,  as  some 
shght  evidence  that  I  was  really  on  the  tracks  of  a  new  creature, 
even  if  it  only  turned  out  to  be  a  forest-dwelling  zebra. 

In  the  early  part  of  1901  I  received,  far  away  from  the  Congo 
Forest  at  the  Ravine  Station,  an  entire  skin  of  an  Okapi,  together 
with  two  skulls.  All  that  the  skin  lacked  were  the  hoofs,  which 
had  dropped  off  the  bones  of  the  feet.  These  specimens  had 
been  obtained  by  the  truly  kind  Lieutenant  Meura,  who,  however, 
had  died  of  Black-water  fever  before  he  could  send  them  ofif ; 
they  had  therefore  been  despatched  in  his  name  by  his  associated 
officer,  Mr.  Eriksson. 

I  knev^  enough  about  anatomy  to  realize  when  I  examined  the 
skulls  and  skin,  that  this  beast  was  a  near  relation  of  the  giraffe. 
What  decided  me  were  the  bi-lobed  lower  canines.  Many  years 
before,  I  remembered  Professor  Garrod  pointing  out  to  me  this 
special  feature  in  the  giraffe  not  met  with  among  the  other 
ruminants. 

I  could  not  protract  my  stay  in  the  Congo  Forest.  It  lay  out- 
side my  sphere  of  work;  and  all  my  caravan,  except  myself,  went 
down  with  various  forms  of  malarial  fever.  The  rainy  weather 
was  terrible,  and  the  natives  that  were  not  Pygmies  seemed  to 
me  to  be  constantly  menacing  an  attack,  though  I  would  have  for- 
given them  much  because  of  the  extraordinary  interest  of  the 
Forest  Bantu  and  Mbuba  languages.  So  I  returned  across  the 
Semliki  River  and  journeyed  southwards  to  explore  the  remark- 
able Ankole  country  as  far  south  as  British  limits. 

On  my  return  to  Entebbe,  the  administrative  capital  of 
Uganda,  I  learned  that  I  was  to  receive  a  visit  from  Sir  Clement 
Hill,  who  just  previously  had  been  made  the  head  of  the  Foreign 
Office  Department  dealing  with  Protectorates.  The  intimation 
of  his  visit  informed  me  that  it  was  to  be  regarded  as  an  unofficial 
journey,  of  a  private  nature,  to  render  him  familiar  with  the 
regions  he  was  to  control  at  the  Foreign  Office ;  but  personally  I 
ascribed  to  it  critical  intentions  not  altogether  favorable  to  my- 
self. The  very  terms  of  my  original  commission,  the  instructions 
I  received,  and  the  very  wide  and  extensive  powers  conferred  on 


348 


THE  STORY  OF  MY  LIFE 


me  in  both  a  military  and  civil  capacity  indicated  Lord  Salis- 
bury's dissatisfaction  with  the  military  policy  and  trend  of  admin- 
istration in  East  Africa  and  Uganda.  Yet  I  was  aware  how 
much  this  discredited  policy  was  affiliated  with  Sir  Clement  Hill's 
views,  instructions,  and  choice  of  candidates.  Moreover,  I  felt 
that  here,  as  in  Nigeria  and  Nyasaland,  I  had  never  quite  hit  it 
off  with  him,  but  that  he  had  been  frequently  overruled  and  my 
policies  supported  by  Sir  Percy  Anderson.  However,  in  some 
respects,  I  was  glad  he  should  see  the  country  for  himself,  realize 
my  difficulties,  and — as  I  considered — the  extraordinary  suc- 
cesses which  had  attended  my  efforts  for  improvement. 

Sir  Clement  Hill  arrived,  conducted  himself  at  first  with  the 
utmost  disagreeableness,  so  that  on  one  or  two  occasions  I  was 
tempted  to  telegraph  my  resignation  to  Lord  Lansdowne.  That  I 
did  not  do  so  was  perhaps  more  due  to  the  English  bishop  of 
Uganda  than  to  any  one  else.  He,  too,  had  been  a  critic  of  mine 
in  the  early  days,  but  he  was  so  pleased  and  satisfied  with  the 
Uganda  Treaty,  that  he  became  one  of  my  warmest  defenders. 

Sir  Clement  Hill,  without  any  warrant  that  I  could  see,  in  his 
instructions,  summoned  a  council  of  representative  people  to  meet 
him — and  me — at  the  native  capital  of  Kampala.  The  French 
Bishop  was  to  come  as  well  as  the  English ;  the  three  Regents  of 
Uganda  were  to  be  there,  and  the  principal  military  officers.  To 
such  an  assembly  Sir  Clement  Hill  put  the  question  baldly : — 
"Do  you  consider  Johnston's  work  as  being  successful,  his 
changes  of  policy  well-founded?" 

The  French  Bishop  said  nothing,  only  simpered.  I  do  not 
think  he  understood  much  English.  One  of  the  military  officers 
remained  silent,  and  the  three  Baganda  Chiefs  probably  thought 
that  they  were  not  expected  to  speak  before  the  Europeans  had 
said  their  say,  if  indeed  they  understood  anything  about  it.  But 
after  a  minute's  pause,  the  English  Bishop  rose,  gave  a  summary 
of  what  I  had  done  between  Naivasha  and  the  Congo  State,  of 
the  difficulties  I  had  had  to  meet  with,  and  of  the  unexpected  suc- 
cesses which  had  attended  my  intervention.  I  felt  intensely 
grateful  to  him,  not  so  much  on  my  own  account,  for  T  had 


THE  STORY  OF  MY  LIFE 


349 


realized  that  my  health  was  failing  and  I  longed  to  be  back  in 
England  out  of  reach  of  malarial  fever;  but  because  there  were 
so  many  others  associated  with  me  in  this  work  of  reform,  whose 
futures  probably  much  depended  on  Foreign  Office  goodwill. 

Bishop  Tucker's  speech  turned  the  tide  and  for  the  rest  of  his 
visit  Hill  was  amiability  embodied. 

After  his  departure  I  felt  that  a  renewed  stay  in  the  eastern 
part  of  the  Protectorate  was  necessary,  not  only  for  fresh  treaty- 
making  but  for  the  solution  of  many  difficulties  with  native  tribes, 
and  the  prosecution  of  geographical  research.  So  in  the  late 
autumn  of  1900  I  visited  Busoga,  and  the  Sese  Archipelago,  and 
after  a  final  visit  for  Christmas  to  Entebbe,  transferred  myself 
and  my  personal  staff  to  the  eastern  part  of  the  Protectorate.  I 
wished  especially  to  visit  the  remarkable  region  of  Mount  Elgon, 
one  of  the  mightiest,  loftiest,  and  most  impressive  of  the  world's 
extinct  volcanoes,  reaching  at  points  on  its  crater  rim  to  over 
fourteen  thousand  feet,  and  covering  with  its  flanks  a  region 
nearly  as  large  as  Switzerland. 

From  Elgon  I  intended  to  penetrate  as  far  as  I  could  towards 
Lakes  Rudolf  and  Baringo.  I  associated  this  part  of  my  re- 
searches very  much  with  one  of  the  few  really  remarkable  men  I 
encountered  in  the  Administration  of  Uganda — C.  W.  Hobley. 
Mr.  Hobley  had  originally  come  out  to  East  Africa  in  1890  as 
a  geologist  and  an  engineer.  He  had  soon  shown  a  capacity  for 
administrative  work  and  risen  to  administrative  posts;  but  his 
geological  eye  was  always  on  the  strata  and  his  philologist's  ear 
always  listening  for  strange  and  new  languages. 

He  it  was  who  first  directed  my  attention  to  the  remarkable 
Bantu  languages  of  West  and  Northwest  Elgon.  He  made 
the  first  researches  into  and  discoveries  of  the  Miocene  and  Plio- 
cene fauna  of  Equatorial  East  Africa,  revealing  to  the  east  of 
the  Victoria  Nyanza,  remains  of  primitive  dinotheres  and  a  new 
species  of  an  extinct  elephant.  His  researches  and  discoveries 
in  the  algae  and  the  aquatic  fauna  of  the  Victoria  Nyanza  assisted 
us  better  to  understand  the  problems  of  Tanganyika. 

I  reached  Lake  Baringo;  I  saw  an  unforgettable  sight  in  the 


350 


THE  STORY  OF  MY  LIFE 


amazing  abundance  and  variety  of  game  animals,  southeast  of 
Mount  Elgon  and  north  of  the  Nandi  country.  I  shot  and 
brought  away  for  the  British  Museum  the  five-horned  giraffe, 
male  and  female;  and  reaching  the  Ravine  Settlement  on  the 
western  edge  of  the  Rift  Valley,  I  learned  the  news  of  Queen 
Victoria's  death,  by  a  telegram  over  those  telegraph  wires  that 
were  being  so  frequently  cut  and  carried  away  by  the  young  men 
of  the  Nandi  tribe. 

I  also  noted  the  gradual  approach  of  the  Uganda  Railway; 
and  under  the  instructions  of  the  Foreign  Office,  chose  a  site  on 
the  west  side  of  the  Rift  Valley  for  the  future  capital  of  British 
East  Africa. 

I  selected  the  situation  of  what  might  be,  in  course  of  time,  a 
great  city  in  a  beautiful  district  about  eight  thousand  feet  in  alti- 
tude, with  woods  of  lofty  yew-trees,  cascades  of  icy  cold  water, 
and  a  temperature,  all  the  year  round,  of  an  average  English 
June.  But  my  choice  was  not  confirmed;  East  African  opinion 
decided  in  favor  of  Nairobi,  a  district  of  much  baser  aspect,  with 
an  altitude  under  six  thousand  feet. 

The  end  of  my  stay  at  the  Ravine  Station  was  rendered  thrill- 
ing in  interest  by  the  rumor  of  the  Bongo  tragelaph  existing 
near  by  in  the  dense  woodland  and  the  occurrence  there  likewise 
of  a  new  species  of  pig,  the  Hylochoerus.  Of  both  these  I  ob- 
tained horns,  teeth,  or  descriptions  which  were  confirmed  within 
a  few  months  by  the  actual  killing  of  the  animals.  Mr.  F.  W. 
Isaac  shot  the  East  African  Bongo,  and  Captain  Meinerzhagen 
secured  one  or  more  specimens  of  the  remarkable  Forest  Pig. 

I  reached  the  coast  without  incident  of  importance,  and  there 
found  instructions  to  stop  in  Egypt  on  my  way  home,  and  confer 
with  Lord  Cromer  on  questions  affecting  both  the  Sudan  and 
Uganda. 

I  reached  England,  Queen  Anne's  Mansions,  and  my  wife, 
early  in  June,  190L  I  gave  an  account  of  the  results  of  my 
mission  to  King  Edward  who  was  still  at  Marlborough  House. 
A  gala  dinner  was  given  to  me  by  Sir  Clement  Hill,  at  which 
Lord  Lansdowne  was  present;  and  my  wife  and  I  were  invited  to 


THE  STORY  OF  MY  LIFE 


351 


Hatfield  for  a  week-end,  the  last  time  I  had  any  prolonged  con- 
versation with  Lord  Salisbury.  His  wife  was  dead  and  he  had 
obviously  lost  much  interest  in  worldly  affairs,  though  he  showed 
curiosity  concerning  the  Okapi,  the  Five-horned  Giraffe,  and  the 
many  other  Natural  History  discoveries  of  my  expedition. 

When  the  first  excitement  of  home-coming  had  worn  off,  I 
began  to  feel  the  effects  of  my  two  attacks  of  Black-water  fever 
in  Uganda.  I  told  the  Foreign  Office  that  I  had  already  fought 
through  six  seizures  of  this  disease  between  1886  and  1901,  and 
that  I  did  not  think  I  could  survive  another.  Therefore,  when 
my  special  mission  came  to  an  end  with  the  preparation  of  my 
final  report  at  the  close  of  September,  I  asked  not  to  be  re- 
employed in  Tropical  Africa. 

Meantime,  as  it  was  a  case  of  getting  well,  resting,  writing  this 
report,  and  winding  up  the  affairs  of  my  extremely  interesting 
expedition,  I  wanted  to  find  some  pleasant,  retired  country  place, 
in  which  I  could  rest  and  get  well,  and  do  my  work.  My  wife's 
uncle.  Lord  de  Saumarez,  offered  us  the  use  of  his  house  in 
Guernsey — Saumarez  Park.  We  accepted  this  proposal  with 
pleasure,  and  here  we  made  our  home  until  the  first  of  October, 
1901,  and  here  much  of  my  book  on  Uganda  was  written. 

I  expected,  during  this  lull  of  three  months,  to  hear  from  the 
Foreign  Office  of  its  future  plans  in  regard  to  my  employment ; 
but  nothing  definite  came  from  them. 

I  did  not  know  whether  I  was  to  retire  on  a  pension,  and  if  so, 
whether  the  pension  would  be  enough  to  live  on ;  whether  I  was 
to  take  up  a  Colonial  appointment ;  and  whether  my  leave  would 
be  extended  long  enough  for  me  to  complete  my  book. 

We  crossed  over  from  Guernsey  to  Weymouth  on  the  most 
beautiful  first  day  of  October  I  can  ever  recollect :  a  day  borrowed 
from  the  best  of  summer,  the  sea  so  calm  that  the  very  clouds 
were  mirrored  in  it.  We  reached  Queen  Anne's  Mansions  the 
same  night,  and  four  days  afterwards  transferred  ourselves  to 
one  of  the  most  charming  homes  I  ever  occupied.  This  was 
styled  "The  Mount,"  and  it  was  situated  on  the  western  side  of 


352 


THE  STORY  OF  MY  LIFE 


Shere,  in  Surrey.  Below  a  gardened  height  was  a  Httle  stream 
called  the  Tillingbourne ;  on  the  west  side  of  the  garden  was  a 
lane,  and  beyond  this  lane,  in  woodlands  of  quite  exceptional 
beauty,  lay  Albury  Park. 

To  the  north  of  the  garden  was  the  Dorking-Guildford  road, 
and  beyond  this  rose,  bold  and  beautiful,  the  Clandon  Downs. 

In  those  days,  more  than  twenty  years  ago,  this  part  of  Surrey 
was  exceptionally  unspoiled.  To  the  south  of  Shere,  lay  great 
stretches  of  magnificent  woodland,  traversed  by  quiet  leaf-strewn 
roads,  going  very  much  down,  or  very  much  up-hill.  On  these 
hills  you  could  attain  to  heights  of  eight  or  nine  hundred  feet,  and 
from  them  you  could  get  glimpses,  on  clear  days,  towards  the 
South  Downs  of  Sussex. 

The  house  lent  to  us,  was  a  fairy-like  abode  of  comely  design, 
comely  furniture  and  cosy  comfort.  It  belonged  to  Mrs.  Scott, 
who,  I  think,  is  only  recently  dead,  and  who  was  the  sister  of  W. 
L.  Thomas  of  the  Graphic.  Her  daughter,  Miss  Eva  Scott,  had 
already  begun  a  great  work  for  the  Blind.  She  had  a  very  clever 
brother,  who,  under  the  name  of  Henry  Seton  Merriman,  wrote 
some  justly  famous  novels  in  the  latter  part  of  the  nineteenth  cen- 
tury. 

The  Scotts  used  to  travel  abroad  for  some  months  every  year, 
and  liked  to  know  that  their  Surrey  home  was  tenanted  by  people 
who  would  appreciate  its  beauty  and  look  after  it.  They  would 
not  hear  of  our  paying  rent.  I  think  the  only  contribution  I  made 
for  the  occupancy  of  their  house  (it  was  lent  to  us  again  in  the 
autumn-winter  of  1903)  was  the  payment  of  the  gardener's 
wages. 

At  "The  Mount"  I  finished  writing  my  two  volumes  on 
Uganda,  before  returning  to  London  in  the  early  part  of  1902. 
It  required  some  concentration  of  mind  to  complete  this  work, 
because  I  was  worried  and  anxious  over  my  future. 

Lord  Salisbury  was  intending  to  give  up  before  long  any  fur- 
ther control  over  the  Government.  My  salary  as  Special  Com- 
missioner in  Uganda  came  to  an  end  on  September  30,  1901. 
Nothing  by  then  had  been  settled  as  to  my  further  prospects  or 
my  pension. 


THE  STORY  OF  MY  LIFE 


353 


I  wrote  therefore  at  the  end  of  October  to  the  Foreign  Office, 
asking  to  know  what  they  proposed  to  do.  Some  days  afterwards 
I  received  an  incomprehensible  telegram  from  the  African  De- 
partment in  which  words  were  omitted,  so  that  its  purport  might 
be  anything,  agreeable  or  disagreeable.  I  wrote  to  point  this  out, 
and  received  an  unnecessarily  sharp  reply  from  Eric  Barrington, 
informing  me  that  the  telegram  implied  that  I  was  to  come  up  and 
see  Lord  Lansdowne,  but  that  as  I  had  not  understood  this,  the 
interview  was  abrogated.  I  therefore  wrote  to  the  young  Lord 
Cranborne  (Parliamentary  Under-Secretary  for  Foreign  Af- 
fairs) to  point  out  this  very  odd  treatment,  and  enclosed  the 
original  incomprehensible  telegram. 

He  replied  promptly,  apologizing  for  the  mishap  and  repeating 
the  invitation.  So  I  went  to  London  in  November,  and  saw  him 
and  Lord  Lansdowne,  as  well  as  Barrington,  who  apologized  for 
the  telegram  blunder.  Lord  Lansdowne  was  exceedingly  kind. 
He  told  me  that  Lord  Salisbury  had  expressed  to  the  King  the 
desire  that  I  should  be  signally  rewarded  for  my  two  years'  work 
in  Uganda  (this  referred  to  the  grant  of  the  G.  C.  M.  G.  which 
was  conferred  on  the  King's  birthday  in  that  year,  and  presented 
to  me  by  King  Edward  in  a  very  gracious  manner).  But  as  to 
the  further  use  of  my  services  nothing  definite  was  said.  Lord 
Lansdowne  asked  me  if  I  would  accept  an  appointment  under  the 
Colonial  Office,  as  a  Governor,  and  I  said  I  would,  provided  the 
post  selected  was  not  in  a  very  fever-stricken  portion  of  Africa. 
I  also  expressed  willingness  to  return  to  the  Mediterranean  as  a 
Consul-General. 

Having  made  all  these  matters  clear,  I  went  back  to  Shere  for 
the  rest  of  the  winter.  No  other  post,  however,  in  the  coming 
year  was  definitely  offered  me,  except  Somaliland,  which  I  de- 
clined, or  Beirut,  which  I  accepted.  But  the  official  who  dwelt 
at  Beirut  withdrew  his  request  for  another  post,  so  that  avenue  of 
employment  was  closed. 

Behind  all  these  vague  suggestions  I  realized  a  growing  atmos- 
phere of  unfriendliness.  The  under-secretaries  at  the  Foreign 
Office  with  whom  I  had  come  into  being  as  a  Consul  in  Africa, 


354 


THE  STORY  OF  MY  LIFE 


to  carry  out  great  schemes,  had  died,  retired,  or  had  been  sent 
away  as  ambassadors  to  Paris  or  elsewhere.  The  men  who  had 
been  appointed  in  their  stead,  were  either  slightly  unfriendly, 
annoyed  at  my  rapid  promotion,  or  took  absolutely  no  interest 
in  my  work. 

Lord  Salisbury  had  made  several  efforts  to  induce  Mr.  Cham- 
berlain to  offer  me  a  post  under  the  Colonial  Office;  but  Cham- 
berlain and  I  had  long  differed  as  to  African  policy,  and  the 
difference  had  been  inflamed  by  Rhodes's  hostility. 

I  took  all  these  disappointments  more  calmly  than  I  might  have 
done,  because  following  the  rules  laid  down  as  regards  pensions 
I  calculated  I  had  earned  at  least,  if  I  retired  in  1902 — a  yearly 
pension  of  £760.  I  thought  that  on  this,  and  the  interest  on  the 
money  I  had  saved  or  inherited  and  my  literary  work  on  top,  it 
would  be  quite  possible  to  live  prudently  in  London  or  the 
country. 

I  might — as  indeed  was  suggested  to  me  at  the  Foreign  Office, 
join  one  of  the  existing  or  about-to-be-created  companies  that 
were  developing  Africa.  I  had  several  books  I  intended  to  write, 
including  my  Comparative  Study  of  the  Bantu  Languages.  My 
health,  moreover,  had  been  materially  damaged  by  the  two  years 
in  Uganda,  and  the  renewed  attacks  of  Black-water  fever.  I  had 
collected  there  such  an  enormous  mass  of  information  as 
prompted  me  to  write  in  the  course  of  succeeding  years  a  huge 
work  on  the  Bantu  languages,  and  other  lesser  volumes  on 
African  anthropology  and  history. 

All  these  calculations,  of  course,  were  based  on  my  being 
allotted  an  adequate  pension.  The  next  turn  in  the  struggle  was 
to  get  this,  and  I  was  nettled,  not  to  say  exasperated  at  the 
attempts  that  seemed  to  be  made  by  Barrington  and  Sanderson 
to  estimate  the  pension  at  about  half  of  what  was  really  due  to 
me ;  exasperated,  because  their  proposals  were  actually  below  the 
total  of  the  figure  recorded  as  due  to  me,  when  I  left  Tunis  to 
go  to  Uganda. 

With  some  prevision  I  had  fortunately,  in  the  summer  of  1899, 
got  this  stated  by  the  Foreign  Office,  and  it  stood  at  a  higher 


THE  STORY  OF  MY  LIFE 


355 


amount  than  was  even  offered  to  me  in  the  spring  of  1902.  It 
remained  therefore  to  estimate  what  the  services  in  Uganda 
should  count  for. 

Sir  Thomas  Sanderson  laid  great  stress  on  the  word  "Special" 
which  was  apparently  to  re-act  on  the  pension,  by  either  providing 
that  the  two  years  spent  as  Special  Commissioner  should  not 
count  as  pensionable  service,  or  should  only  be  calculated  at  a 
much  lower  rate — why  I  can  not  think. 

Eventually,  after  much  higgle-haggling,  the  pension  was  fixed 
at  a  few  shillings  under  £500  a  year:  a  settlement,  which  consid- 
ering the  size  of  the  areas  I  added  to  the  British  Empire,  the  fact 
that  my  salary  during  these  many  years  of  work  was  always  a 
low  one  when  contrasted  with  other  posts  of  equal  danger  in  risks 
to  health  and  life,  I  thought  altogether  lacking  in  generosity.  But 
I  kept  such  feelings  to  myself,  because  it  was  suggested  that  the 
matter  was  hardly  one  to  bother  me,  as  I  should  certainly  be 
re-employed  before  long. 


CHAPTER  XVI 


Another  complication  in  my  life  arose  about  this  time  be- 
tween 1901  and  1902.  Dr.  Philip  Lutley  Sclater,  Secretary  to 
the  Zoological  Society  since  the  'fifties,  wrote  to  me  at  the  begin- 
ning of  1902,  to  tell  me  he  was  about  to  resign  his  post  of  Secre- 
tary. He  asked  me,  as  I  had  just  joined  the  Council,  if  I  could 
support  the  candidature  of  his  eldest  son  for  the  Secretaryship. 
I  told  him  that  I  could  do  so,  because  I  had  known  his  son  from 
boyhood,  and  had  followed  with  special  interest  his  zoological 
work  in  India,  South  Africa,  and  elsewhere;  that  I  should  back 
his  candidature  simply  because  he  was  a  good  zoologist,  and  in  no 
way  because  he  was  Sclater's  son.  I  warned  his  father  in  fact 
that  the  son-ship  would  be  William  Sclater's  greatest  difficulty,  as 
his  father's  long  term  of  office  and  decided  manner  had  created 
some  degree  of  enmity  to  a  Sclater  succession. 

The  news  that  Dr.  Sclater  was  retiring  had  already  set  tongues 
wagging,  and  roused  an  outcry  of  bad  management  being  the 
cause.  I,  who  had  been  intimately  acquainted  with  the  Zoo  since 
I  was  fourteen,  and  especially  so  in  the  opening  months  of  1902, 
had  pretty  well  gauged  the  state  of  affairs.  I  knew  that  there 
was  in  some  directions  gross  mismanagement  in  the  Zoological 
Gardens,  but  that  it  was  not  directly  Sclater's  fault;  it  was  due 
to  Clarence  Bartlett,  who  had  succeeded  his  father  a  few  years 
previously  as  Superintendent. 

The  Duke  of  Bedford  at  this  time  (the  spring  of  1902),  after 
I  was  settled  in  London  in  Chester  Terrace,  Regent's  Park, 
startled  me  by  offering  to  propose  my  candidature  as  Sclater's 
successor,  with  extended  powers  which  might  give  me  a  better 
grip  over  the  management  of  the  Gardens.  I  went  to  see  him 
and  told  him  I  was  precluded  from  accepting  his  proposal,  unless 
Sclater's  son  withdrew  his  candidature,  that  I  had  voluntarily 

356 


THE  STORY  OF  MY  LIFE 


357 


proposed  advocating  the  latter's  claims;  and  that  even  then  the 
post  would  be  considered  as  more  suitable  to  a  professional 
zoologist.  The  Duke  then  said  he  felt  a  Special  Committee 
should  be  formed  to  examine  all  the  affairs  of  the  Zoological 
Society  and  the  administration  of  the  Gardens.  Would  I  be  its 
Honorary  Secretary?   I  assented. 

The  Committee  thus  formed  made  a  most  searching  enquiry 
which  in  the  long  run  exempted  Dr.  Sclater  from  blame,  but 
Clarence  Bartlett  was  asked  to  resign  from  his  post.  He  was  at 
the  time  in  very  bad  health,  and  died  soon  afterwards.  As  a 
matter  of  fact  this  solution  was  facilitated  by  my  writing  him  a 
private  letter,  and  he  took  the  advice  tendered. 

Then  ensued  the  election  of  William  Sclater  as  Secretary.  It 
was  carried  by  one  vote,  and  for  twelve  months  (the  appointment 
is  theoretically  a  yearly  one)  he  was  Secretary,  but  during  that 
twelve  months  he  had  a  very  uneasy  time. 

The  Duke  of  Bedford,  who  had  been  seemingly  neutral,  now, 
so  far  as  appearance  went,  seemed  to  turn  against  him.  I,  one 
way  and  the  other,  was  so  much  nettled  and  incensed  at  the  vio- 
lent quarrels  which  arose  over  a  matter  in  which  I  had  through- 
out acted  disinterestedly  that  I  withdrew  from  the  Council,  and 
the  following  year  a  sensational  attendance  took  place  at  the 
annual  election  meeting.  Dr.  P.  Chalmers  Mitchell  was  chosen 
to  succeed  Mr.  Sclater.  Possibly  the  selection  was  a  good  one. 
Equally  possibly  the  development  and  improvement  of  the  Zoo 
might  have  been  as  decided  under  the  Secretaryship  of  the 
younger  Sclater  (who  before  and  since  those  days  has  had  a  dis- 
tinguished career  in  Zoology)  as  they  became  under  Chalmers 
Mitchell.  And  curiously  enough,  after  twenty  years,  I  note  that 
William  Sclater  has  been  reelected  to  the  Council  and  is  on  the 
best  of  terms  with  Chalmers  Mitchell. 

The  less  satisfactory  appointment  was  that  of  W.  E.  de  Win- 
ton  as  Superintendent  in  succession  to  Clarence  Bartlett.  Mr.  de 
Winton  was,  so  to  speak,  a  scientific  naturalist  and  a  man  of 
means ;  but  his  health  was  already  seriously  affected.  However, 


358 


THE  STORY  OF  MY  LIFE 


he  only  held  the  post  for  a  short  time/  and  was  succeeded  by  the 
wholly  efficient  R.  I.  Pocock,  a  member  of  the  British  Museum 
Staff,  under  whose  superintendence  and  residence  enormous  im- 
provements have  been  carried  out. 

I  dare  say  all  this  is  very  boring  to  read.  I  have  only  inserted 
it  as  an  episode  in  my  life  which  considerably  affected  my  plans, 
intentions  and  sentiments.  I  had  grown  up  with  the  Zoological 
Gardens  from  the  time  I  was  eleven  years  old.  I  knew  I  was  not 
a  professional  zoologist,  though  my  studies  and  knowledge  of 
anatomy  might  almost  have  entitled  me  to  be  called  so.  But  this 
might  be  more  the  case  now  than  it  was  twenty  years  ago.  I 
acted  throughout  those  strenuous  years  of  1902,  1903  without 
any  self-interest — avowedly  and  unmistakably  so;  and  I  have 
never  quite  lost  the  sense  of  resentment  at  the  behavior  of  certain 
zoologists,  both  at  Regent's  Park  and  at  the  Natural  History 
Museum.  It  would  almost  seem  at  this  period  as  though  I  had 
actually  excited  jealousy  by  the  discoveries  I  had  made  in  the 
African  fauna  and  presented  to  the  British  Museum;  discoveries, 
I  hope,  which  I  never  exaggerated  in  any  writing,  either  as  to 
their  importance,  or  my  share  in  making  them.  I  pointed  out, 
indeed,  in  several  instances,  that  I  had  been  lucky  rather  than 
discerning. 

The  Okapi  and  the  Five-horned  Giraffe  had  peculiarly  upset 
certain  personalities.  One  professor  wrote  an  angry  article  in  a 
London  review  to  show  that  the  revelation  of  the  Okapi's  ex- 
istence was  a  nothing  in  importance  compared  to  the  discovery  of 
a  new  death-dealing  microbe,  a  new  nutritive  fish,  a  new  fossil 
bird. 

I  quite  agreed  with  him,  but  did  not  deduce  from  this  that  I 
ought  to  have  been  actually  silent  on  the  subject,  and  leave  the 
Okapi  to  be  found  by  somebody  else.  As  regards  the  Five-horned 
Giraffe  from  Rift  Valley,  south  of  Baringo,  it  was  and  is, 
the  definite  discovery  of  a  giraffe  which  possesses  five  bony 
processes  on  the  skull  (popularly  termed  "horns"),  and  not  only 

^  Mr.  de  Winton  died  at  the  age  of  sixty-five,  on  August  30,  1922. 
Mr.  Pocock  has  just  retired  from  the  superintendence  after  holding  it  for 
twenty  years. 


THE  STORY  OF  MY  LIFE 


359 


the  primordial  three.  Doggett  and  I  had  shot  two  males  and  one 
female,  and  had  landed  the  skins,  and  their  heads,  necks  and 
skulls,  in  London,  at  the  Cromwell  Road  Museum.  But  so  angry 
were  the  Museum  officials  at  my  course  of  luck,  that  they  ulti- 
mately named  the  sub-species  after  Lord  Rothschild. 

In  regard  to  Nyasaland  in  earlier  days,  it  may  be  that  a  tend- 
ency to  name  everything  new  after  me  merely  because  I  had  sent 
the  specimens  home  was  overdone.  In  several  instances  I  had 
previously  pointed  out  that  although  I  might  be  the  person  who 

presented  the  specimen,  it  was  really  shot  or  procured  by  A  , 

B  ,  C  ,  or  D  .   But  Dr.  Sclater  or  the  authorities  at 

Kew  or  the  British  Museum  took  no  heed  of  this,  and  called  the 
new  species  or  variety  after  me. 

With  regard  to  the  Okapi,  it  was  difficult  to  ignore  the  original 
impulse  and  action  of  Sir  E.  Ray  Lankester  and  Dr.  Sclater,  in 
naming  it  "Ocapia  johnstoni,"  on  the  receipt  of  the  first  speci- 
mens. But  on  second  thoughts  the  Museum  authorities  hoped  to 
have  a  way  out  of  the  difficulty  which  might  put  me  on  a  side 
track.  On  the  next  and  later  reports  received  direct  from  the 
Congo  State,  it  was  argued  that  there  were  two  or  even  three 
species  of  these  Giraffids.  So  the  two  most  probably  represented 
by  specimens  were  named  lihrechtsi  and  erikssoni. 

It  was  not  until  Mons.  Jules  Fraipont,  an  official  zoologist  in 
Belgium,  received,  reviewed  and  described  a  great  and  conclusive 
mass  of  material  that  it  was  decided  there  was  only  one  extant 
species  of  Okapi,  and  that  it  should  be  named  after  me. 

However,  there  were  pleasant  as  well  as  unpleasant  things  to 
be  recorded  of  1902.  In  May  that  year  the  University  of  Cam- 
bridge conferred  on  me  the  honorary  degree  of  Doctor  of  Sci- 
ence. I  owed  this  great  distinction  to  the  recommendation  of  the 
ornithologist,  Edward  Newton.  My  personal  acquaintance  with 
him  was  very  slight,  but  he  had  followed  with  particular  keenness 
my  African  collections  of  birds.  So  I  went  down  to  Cambridge 
— or  rather  to  Ely,  to  stay  with  the  Bishop ;  and  at  Cambridge, 
duly  gowned,  received  the  honor,  and  heard  myself  described  in 
a  Latin  speech  by  Dr.  Sandys. 

I  listened  to  the  speech  with  peculiar  interest.    It  was  spoken 


360 


THE  STORY  OF  MY  LIFE 


with  a  right  phonetical  pronunciation  of  Latin,  which  seemed  to 
me  a  novel  thing  in  a  very  old  University  in  1902. 

The  following  summer,  however,  was  rendered  anxious  and 
unhappy  by  an  accident  which  happened  to  my  wife.  She  was 
expecting  a  baby,  but  a  short  time  before  its  birth,  had  an  unex- 
pected fall,  which  brought  on  the  premature  delivery  of  twins, 
who  died  soon  after  their  birth.  As  soon  as  she  was  sufficiently 
recovered,  the  kind  Thomases  of  the  Graphic  lent  us  their  house 
at  Chertsey,  or  strictly  speaking,  near  Chertsey.  This,  with  a 
charming  garden,  a  beautiful  croquet  lawn,  and  a  boat,  was  situ- 
ated on  the  banks  of  the  river  near  Chertsey  Bridge.  There  were 
also  a  brake,  two  horses,  and  a  stable ;  so  that  when  not  boating 
on  the  river,  we  could  drive  far  down  into  Surrey.  We  went  to 
see  Sir  Charles  and  Lady  Dilke  at  Pirbright.  We  visited  the 
library  at  Windsor  Castle,  and  stayed  on  through  the  golden 
glory  of  October  before  returning  to  Regent's  Park. 

I  attended  the  deferred  Coronation  in  September,  robed  as  a 
G.  C.  M.  G.,  and  sat  near  the  entrance  into  the  chancel,  immedi- 
ately below  Sara  Bernhardt.  I  had  met  her  once,  some  months 
previously,  at  the  Moberley  Bells,  and  was  delighted  to  find,  not 
only  that  she  recognized  me — this  might  have  been  simply  well- 
acted — but  that  she  remembered  my  name,  and  the  fact  that  I  had 
made  some  exploration  of  the  Tunisian  Sahara.  We  shared  re- 
freshments. I  introduced  her  to  those  who  sat  round  about  us, 
and  we  formed  a  delightful  party,  each  taking  to  himself  the 
special  greeting  of  eyes  bestowed  by  King  Edward  on  Sara,  as  he 
returned  from  the  altar  after  the  Coronation  had  taken  place. 

The  autumn  months  of  1902  were  a  good  deal  taken  up  with 
five  journeys  through  Ireland.  My  eyes  had  been  sorely  exer- 
cised in  the  previous  year  by  the  completion  of  my  book  on 
"Uganda,"  fine  work  in  drawing  and  painting;  but  the  sight  had 
also  possibly  been  affected  by  the  weakness  supervening  on  the 
two  attacks  of  Black-water  fever  in  Africa.  Hitherto,  down  to 
the  age  of  forty-four,  my  sight  had  been  wonderful,  I  could  see 
farther  and  more  distinctly  than  most  of  the  Europeans  with 
whom  I  lived  and  moved,  and  could  execute  without  strain  ex- 
traordinarily fine  work  in  drawing,  or  read  without  difficulty  the 


THE  STORY  OF  MY  LIFE 


361 


smallest  print.  But  I  was  obliged  in  the  middle  of  1902  to  consult 
an  oculist,  and  the  first  specialist  I  saw  in  this  branch  of  medical 
science  seemed  to  do  me  very  little  good ;  to  cause  me  extraordi- 
nary pain,  and  not  to  help  me  to  resume  my  work  in  painting  and 
writing.  One  oculist,  however,  after  the  Coronation  was  over, 
advised  me  to  give  up  all  work  as  much  as  possible,  involving 
reading  and  writing,  and  to  make  a  voyage  to  rest  the  eyes.  At 
the  same  time,  the  management  of  the  Graphic  and  Daily  Graphic 
wanted  to  send  some  one  like  myself  to  visit  Ireland,  examine  the 
question  of  Home  Rule  critically,  and  write  a  series  of  letters  on 
the  subject. 

I  waited  until  my  wife  had  recovered  her  health,  and  then 
started  for  Ireland  where  I  spent  much  of  the  autumn  and  early 
winter.  I  took  with  me  a  good  camera,  and  was  fortunate 
enough  to  be  introduced  early  in  my  proceedings  to  a  remarkable 
and  wholly  interesting  man,  Mr.  James  Welsh,  a  native  of  Ulster, 
but  one  taking  quite  an  unprejudiced  view  of  the  problems  of 
Ireland,  especially  the  question  of  Home  Rule.  The  Graphic  was 
generous  in  its  payments,  so  I  was  able  to  engage  this  man  to 
accompany  me  over  much  of  my  tours.  He  was  a  more  skilful 
photographer,  or  at  any  rate,  a  more  patient  developer  of  nega- 
tives than  I  was,  though  I  may  have  had  a  better  instinct  as  to  the 
kind  of  thing  to  be  photographed. 

My  first  stay  of  any  length  was  made  at  Achill  Island,  off  the 
west  coast  of  Mayo.  I  believe  it  is  the  largest  island  off  Ire- 
land. I  had  not  at  that  time  met  Mr.  Welsh.  Some  one  had 
recommended  me  to  visit  Achill  whilst  the  autumn  was  young, 
and  the  sunshine  bright.  He  promised  me  a  feast  for  the  eyes, 
peace  for  the  nerves,  and  the  nearest  approach  to  "wildness"  still 
lingering  in  the  British  Islands. 

My  first  experiences  in  Dublin  were  unfortunate.  I  was  ad- 
vised to  go  to  an  hotel  celebrated  for  its  remarkable  Turkish 
Baths,  but  it  might  have  been  more  justly  noted  for  the  swarms 
and  vigor  of  its  fleas.  One  night  of  it  was  all  I  could  stand,  and 
with  a  sore  and  swollen  skin,  I  entered  the  express,  which  the 
next  day  was  to  carry  me  across  the  whole  width  of  Ireland,  and 
land  me  at  a  forlorn  littip  cfntion  opposite  Achill  Island.  From 


362 


THE  STORY  OF  MY  LIFE 


here  I  crossed  in  a  side-car  along  the  bridge  which  had  recently 
been  constructed  by  the  instigation  of  Mr.  Balfour,  to  connect 
Achill  Island  with  the  mainland.  A  fev/  years  previously  in  the 
channel  separating  the  two  a  storm  had  arisen,  which  had 
wrecked  the  boats  conveying  a  party  of  harvesters  back  to  Achill, 
and  some  sixteen  of  them  were  drowned. 

On  the  northeast  coast  of  this  mountainous  island,  a  somewhat 
overpraised  hotel  existed,  practically  the  only  inn  on  the  whole 
island.  It  did  not  come  up  to  all  the  commendations  of  the  guide- 
books, because  its  beds  had  fleas.  But  the  meals  were  good  and 
well  cooked,  and  the  host,  what  I  might  call  "an  intelligent  gentle- 
man." In  earlier  years  he  had  been  an  officer  in  the  R.  I.  C,  and 
had  played  a  famous  part  in  detecting  and  solving  conspiracies. 
He  had  now  retired  from  political  service  and  had  given  himself 
up  to  the  development  of  Achill  and  the  attraction  of  tourists, 
above  all  of  tourists  interested  in  bird-life;  for  Achill  in  those 
days  was  the  most  remarkable  portion  of  the  British  Islands,  not 
only  for  the  numbers  and  variety  of  its  birds,  but  for  their  tame- 
ness,  the  fact  that  you  saw  them.  I  quite  appreciated  this  point. 
I  had  grown  weary  of  British  Ornithology  in  England,  because 
although  it  might  include  a  varied  list  of  wild  swans,  wild  geese 
and  ducks,  plovers,  warblers,  vultures  and  birds  of  prey,  you 
never  saw  them,  except  in  museums  or  zoological  gardens.  Here 
in  Achill  Island,  in  September,  1902,  the  show  of  birds  was  really 
remarkable. 

On  the  rough  roads  and  village  streets,  the  red-billed  choughs 
swarmed  as  tamely  as  pigeons  might  do  on  St.  Paul's  pavements. 
Whooper  swans  swam  placidly  on  the  lochs,  as  did  almost  all  the 
ducks  and  geese  attributed  to  the  British  fauna.  There  were  also 
parties  of  wild  Mute  swans,  no  doubt  anciently  introduced. 

The  mountains  rose  to  between  two  and  three  thousand  feet  on 
the  northwest  coast,  descending  abruptly  from  such  altitudes  to 
the  gigantic  waves  of  the  Atlantic,  and  on  their  lofty  clififs  could 
be  discerned  feral  goats  of  a  long-established  variety,  white,  long- 
bearded,  and  with  splendid  horns.  The  heads  of  some  of  the 
semi-wild  sheep  reminded  one  of  the  Sardinian  mouflon.  I  think 
there  were  red-deer,  but  they  possibly  have  been  re-introduced, 


THE  STORY  OF  MY  LIFE 


363 


though  they  abounded  in  Achill  a  century  earlier.  The  breed  of 
sheep-dogs — I  remarked — was  almost  exactly  like  a  small  wolf, 
as  though  really  descended  from  that  animal. 

There  seemed  to  be  about  six  thousand  indigenous  Achill 
Islanders,  one  of  the  handsomest  peoples  I  have  ever  seen,  but 
apparently  of  Norse  or  Danish  origin  in  the  main.  The  majority 
of  them  only  spoke  the  Irish  language  and  knew  no  English. 

The  mountain  sides  to  the  edges  of  the  cliffs  that  overhung  the 
Atlantic  were  clothed  with  a  glorious  mantle  of  red-purple 
heather,  trimmed  at  the  edges  with  blazing  yellow  gorse.  I  have 
seen  nowhere  else  in  the  British  Isles  such  vivid  coloring. 

The  host  of  the  inn  at  Dugort  provided  his  guests  for  a  small 
payment  with  excellent  riding  ponies  and  picnic  lunches,  so  that  I 
spent  day  after  day  of  a  glorious  week  of  fine  weather  riding 
across  the  island,  with  a  large  sketch-book  and  water-color  paint- 
box. I  had  in  all  ten  days,  as  far  as  I  can  remember,  without  a 
shower  of  rain,  and  in  spite  of  my  promise  to  rest  my  eyes, 
worked  from  early  morning  to  sunset,  to  record  the  beautiful 
scenery.  I  afterwards  contributed  these  illustrations  of  Achill 
scenery  to  Royal  Academy  exhibitions,  especially  one  showing  the 
black  Kerry  cattle  amid  the  heather  and  golden  gorse  on  the 
mountain  sides. 

I  devoted,  under  the  guidance  of  Mr.  Welsh,  some  time  and 
care  to  studying  the  exquisite  scenery  and  the  interesting  flora  of 
Southwest  Ireland.  Here,  in  the  Dingle  Peninsula,  for  example, 
the  attitude  of  the  people  was  disagreeable,  almost  to  hostility. 
This  was  tantalizing  because  the  natives  were  handsome  and  very 
Iberian  in  appearance,  resembling  quite  remarkably  the  Moors  of 
Algeria,  or  the  people  of  southern  Spain. 

I  devoted  also  a  good  deal  of  time  to  Belfast,  and  to  the  scenery 
and  people  of  Antrim.  I  realized  the  extraordinary  difference 
between  Ulster  and  the  rest  of  Ireland.  Ulster  was  like  a  minia- 
ture of  Scotland  and  Lancashire  in  the  life  of  its  people,  their 
remarkable  industry,  cleanliness,  and  prosperity.^ 

^  In  addition  to  my  ten  letters  in  the  Daily  Graphic  (November-December, 
1902),  I  published  the  first  of  the  impressions  made  on  me  by  Ireland  and 
the  Irish  people  and  the  language  in  Views  and  Reviews,  Williams  and 
Norgate,  1912. 


I 


364  THE  STORY  OF  MY  LIFE 

My  subsequent  visits  to  Dublin,  where  I  stayed  at  the  very 
comfortable — not  to  say  luxurious — Shelburne  Hotel,  brought 
home  to  me  the  great  charm  this  city  then  possessed,  the  efficient 
way  in  which  its  museums,  picture  galleries,  libraries  were  devel- 
oped and  shown  to  the  pubhc.  Much  of  this  work  had  been  done 
by  men  of  Irish  birth  and  surname,  who  had,  however,  served 
the  British  Empire  to  start  with,  and  were  spending  their  declin- 
ing days  in  Dublin. 

One  of  them  directed  the  National  Art  Gallery,  took  an  inter- 
est in  my  style  of  painting,  and  subsequently  exhibited  in  Dublin 
selections  of  my  works.  Our  relations,  however,  some  years 
later,  had  a  severe  jar.  He  had  read  an  account  in  some  review 
of  a  picture  exhibited  by  me  at  the  Royal  Academy  in  1898.  It 
represented  an  incident  of  our  Arab  wars,  and  of  course  was 
painted  from  actuality  as  far  as  possible — an  Angoni  Zulu  with  a 
red  kilt,  lies  on  the  top  of  a  trampled  sandbank,  dying  or  dead 
of  a  wound.  In  the  background  stretches  a  strip  of  marshy 
coastland,  the  line  of  a  blue  lake,  and  against  the  horizon  a  range 
of  sun-lit  mountains. 

But  when  I  crossed  over  to  Dublin  at  this  later  date,  to  see  the 
picture  by  special  invitation,  its  place  on  the  walls  was  shrouded 
with  wrappers.  Enquiry  elicited  that  the  son  of  the  Director  died 
in  some  such  a  way  in  the  South  African  War;  and  although  he 
was  an  Irish  officer  and  my  picture  represented  a  nearly  nude 
Zulu  warrior,  painted  some  three  years  before  the  lamentable 
death  of  the  Director's  son,  the  coincidence  had  been  too  much 
for  the  father's  feelings,  and  my  picture  was  returned  to  me. 

I  might  say  a  few  words  here  about  the  African  Society  be- 
tween 1902  and  1921.  As  early  as  1894  I  had  approached  vari- 
ous people  of  knowledge  and  importance,  proposing  that  there 
should  be  a  society  founded  for  the  special  study  of  Africa,  just 
as  there  was  the  Royal  Asiatic  Society,  whose  remarkable  library 
I  was  fond  of  consulting  whenever  I  was  in  London.  Little  or 
no  response,  however,  followed  my  suggestion.  I  revived  the 
subject  with  the  same  result  when  at  home  in  1899. 

In  1900,  however,  Mary  Kingsley  died  of  typhoid  fever  at 


THE  STORY  OF  MY  LIFE 


365 


Simon's  Town,  South  Africa,  where  she  had  been  to  nurse  the 
Boer  prisoners  of  war.  Mary  Kingsley  was  a  charming  attrac- 
tive woman,  who  made  a  friend  of  any  one  she  chose  to  meet,  and 
amongst  those  who  had  been  won  over  by  her  charm  of  manner 
and  her  vivid  talk,  was  Mrs.  J.  R.  Green,  the  widow  of  that 
remarkable  Oxford  Professor,  J.  R.  Green,  who  had  written  the 
first  really  far-sighted,  introspective,  and  popular  work  on  Eng- 
lish history.  Mrs.  Green  was  a  Stopford  of  a  well-known  Irish 
family.  I  don't  think  she  had  ever  been  in  Africa  in  those  days, 
or  knew  or  cared  much  about  that  continent,  but  like  many  other 
people  she  had  been  greatly  attracted  by  Mary  Kingsley's  nature, 
her  originality  and  her  unconventional  descriptions  of  Africa. 

As  a  matter  of  fact,  all  Mary  Kingsley  ever  saw  of  the  African 
Continent  prior  to  1900  was  seen  in  two  separate  visits  (1893-94, 
1894-95)  to  the  coast  of  West  Central  Africa,  between  the  Niger 
Delta  and  the  Ogowe  River,  which  visits  altogether  occupied  less 
than  two  years.  She  had  collected  for  examination  in  England  a 
few  species  of  fresh- water  fish,  and  she  had  made  many  notes  of 
native  customs  and  beliefs.  But  she  went  out  to  West  Africa 
with  very  little  previous  knowledge  of  its  ethnology  and  natural 
history.  Many  of  her  assumptions  and  conclusions  were  incor- 
rect. She  knew  nothing  of  surveying,  revealed  nothing  new  in 
the  way  of  geography,  no  new  language  or  racial  type.  The  book 
she  published  on  her  return  was  amusing  to  read,  but  chiefly 
amusing  to  people  who  did  not  know  Africa,  and  were  not  likely 
to  be  amazed  or  vexed  at  her  mistakes.  She  was  greatly  liked 
by  the  first  Lord  Cromer,  who  vaunted  her  work  whenever  he 
had  an  opportunity.^  Between  1896  and  1899,  however,  she  set 
herself  very  seriously  to  study  Africa,  its  fauna,  flora,  and  peo- 
ples; and  had  she  carried  out  the  contemplated  third  expedition 
in  1899  she  might  on  her  return  have  made  a  noteworthy  contri- 
bution to  knowledge.  But  she  was  wrought  up  over  the  ethics  of 
the  South  African  War;  and,  moved  to  pity  over  the  Boer  cause, 

^  The  late  Lord  Cromer — at  any  rate  at  this  period — knew  in  reality  very 
little  about  Africa,  though  he  had  spent  many  years  in  the  British  Agency 
in  Egypt.  He  had  always  refused  to  master  Arabic,  and  devoted  himself 
contrariwise  to  modern  Greek. 


366 


THE  STORY  OF  MY  LIFE 


went  out  to  Cape  Colony  to  nurse  the  Dutch-speaking  prisoners 
of  war. 

Mrs.  Green  was  so  overcome  at  the  news  of  Mary  Kingsley's 
death  that  in  quick  succession  she  deified  her,  erected  her  into  a 
goddess  of  Africa,  and  wished  to  found  an  African  Society  under 
her  spiritual  patronage. 

I,  being  in  Africa  at  the  time,  was  not  available  for  consulta- 
tion, so  she  called  on  my  wife,  packed  her  into  a  hansom,  went 
round  to  people  of  influence  and  money,  and  secured  their  support 
in  one  afternoon — much  in  regard  to  influence,  little  in  the  direc- 
tion of  money — for  the  foundation  of  an  African  Society,  which 
was  to  be  founded  "in  memory  of  Mary  Kingsley;"  and  to  dis- 
seminate in  its  journal  the  device  of  a  Mary  Kingsley  Medal. 

When  I  returned  to  England  in  the  summer  of  1901,  I  found 
myself  more  or  less  pledged  in  my  absence  to  assist  in  founding 
this  African  Society.  Lord  Ripon  had  become  its  first  president, 
but  told  me  he  only  held  the  chair  till  my  retirement  from  active 
service  gave  me  sufiicient  leisure  to  succeed  him. 

Rather  unwillingly  I  did  so :  unwillingly  because  so  many  of 
the  small  membership  in  those  days  were  unscientific,  emotional, 
sensational,  and  wanting  to  be  "thrilled." 

I  had  an  affection  for  Mary  Kingsley,  but  no  desire  to  create 
a  Mary  Kingsley  myth,  or  to  make  her  out  as  having  written 
anything  about  Africa — as  yet — worthy  of  serious  remembrance 
or  scientific  discussion.  There  were  potent  names  of  people  like 
Lord  Cromer  on  the  list  of  councillors  and  supporters,  but  they 
never  attended  meetings.  Everything  involving  attention  to  busi- 
ness or  arrangement  of  meetings  devolved  on  Mrs.  Green,  and 
the  secretary  she  had  been  instrumental  in  appointing.  This 
secretary  (De  Cardi)  was  a  good-humored,  rather  h'less  Liver- 
pool merchant,  who  called  himself  "Count  De  Cardi,"  and  pos- 
sibly correctly,  for  he  was  of  Corsican  descent.  I  had  known 
him  in  his  trading  capacity,  and  as  the  master  of  a  small  steamer 
in  the  Niger  Delta. 

He  had  made  a  small  competence  out  of  African  trading,  and 
served  the  African  Society  as  Secretary  with  little  or  no  remu- 


THE  STORY  OF  MY  LIFE 


367 


neration.  But  he  had  practically  no  scientific  knowledge  of 
Africa,  not  even  a  shadowy  understanding  of  her  problems.  He 
used  to  get  on  my  nerves  whenever  he  rose  to  speak,  because  he 
would  prelude  most  of  his  statements  with  the  phrase  "In  memory 
of  'Er,"  casting  a  side-glance  at  Mrs.  Green. 

My  first  term  of  presidency  lasted  two  years.  I  retired  then, 
though  I  continued  to  take  an  interest  in  the  conduct  of  the 
Journal  which  has  always  been  a  noteworthy  production,  much 
superior  to  the  babble  talked  at  the  meetings. 

As  the  years  rolled  by,  poor  De  Cardi  fell  a  victim  to  some 
African  complication  of  his  health,  and  died.  Wrangle  followed 
wrangle  as  to  the  management  and  policy,  from  all  of  which  I 
stood  aloof.  Amongst  other  Presidents  was  Sir  Clement  Hill, 
my  sometimes-enemy,  who  had  become  a  member  of  Parliament 
after  his  retirement ;  but  he  made — I  thought — a  good  President 
of  the  African  Society  because  he  was  not  too  sentimental;  so 
during  his  term  of  office  my  interest  in  its  affairs  revived.  Then 
came  on  the  scene  Cathcart  Wason,  another  troubler  of  the  peace, 
alternately  a  good  friend  and  bitter  enemy  of  Mrs.  Green;  who, 
however,  avoided  the  enmity  by  retreating  to  Ireland  and  becom- 
ing absorbed  in  Irish  politics.  Mr.  Cathcart  Wason  became 
President  and  endeavored  to  give  the  Society  too  much  of  an 
Imperialistic  turn  during  the  War. 

At  the  close  of  the  Great  War,  when  I  was  undergoing  an 
operation  in  a  Nursing  Home,  a  deputation  of  members  came  to 
see  me,  and  begged  me  to  become  President  again.  I  was  in  that 
genial  mood  which  comes  to  most  people  when  the  operation  is 
safely  over  and  convalescence  comes  with  great  strides.  I  ac- 
cepted, entered  on  a  further  term  of  presidency  at  the  special 
appeal,  amongst  others,  of  Mr.  Cathcart  Wason. 

In  1919  I  was  confronted  with  an  urgent  difificulty. 

Post-War  developments  in  Victoria  Street  threatened  to  de- 
prive the  Society  of  its  office  there,  which  had  previously  been 
let  to  it  at  a  small  rent.  It  became  urgently  necessary  to  find  a 
fresh  abode  within  the  means  of  a  nearly  bankrupt  Association. 
I  talked  with  Professor  Wyndham  Dunstan  thereanent.  He 


368 


THE  STORY  OF  MY  LIFE 


was  the  Director  of  the  Imperial  Institute,  which  seemed  to  me 
an  appropriate  abode.  Here  I  was  able  to  find  accommodation 
for  the  African  Society  which  materially  improved  its  prospects 
and  usefulness. 

But  for  some  unknown  reason  the  prospect  of  being  housed  in 
this  South  Kensington  building  greatly  upset  Mr.  Cathcart  Wa- 
son,  who  by  that  time — I  can  not  help  thinking — was  hardly 
responsible  for  his  changeable  and  violently  expressed  opinions. 

At  any  rate  on  the  day  when  I  attended  a  Council  Meeting  for 
the  purpose  of  being  re-elected  President,  at  the  wish  of  nearly 
every  member  of  the  Council,  I  found  that  nearly  every  member 
of  Council  had  thought  the  matter  so  trite  and  certain  that  they 
had  not  given  themselves  the  trouble  to  attend  and  record  their 
votes.  Only  Mr.  Wason  came  with  a  friend  who  had  been  an 
Anglo-Indian  official.  When  he  arrived  he  looked  so  ill,  so  ter- 
ribly demented,  that  out  of  pity  and  a  sense  of  decency  (feeling 
that  one  could  not  argue  with  a  man  so  near  death)  I  cheerfully 
accepted  the  result  of  the  two  votes  of  himself  and  his  companion, 
and  saw  my  fourth  year  of  Presidency  annulled. 

However,  this  result  was  not  received  quietly  by  the  rest  of 
the  Council.  A  special  meeting  was  called  and  I  was  unanim- 
ously voted  back  to  the  Chair.  I  agreed  to  serve  a  fourth  year 
as  President  in  order  to  overcome  all  the  difficulties  of  reinstal- 
ment  under  the  wing  of  the  Imperial  Institute. 

My  health,  however,  was  making  impossible  these  constant 
journeys  to  London,  and  residence  in  London  with  attendance  at 
Council  Meetings  and  the  reading  of  papers ;  so  I  intimated  quite 
decidedly  that  I  could  not  continue  my  Presidency  any  farther, 
but  that  I  would  serve  with  Sir  Howard  d'Egville  as  joint  Editor 
of  the  Journal.  This,  therefore,  is  the  existing  arrangement. 
Miss  d'Egville,  for  a  long  period  Assistant  Secretary,  has  ably 
filled  the  post  of  Secretary,  and  the  Earl  Buxton  has  for  the  last 
three  years  been  a  most  efficient  President.  The  membership 
and  finances  of  the  Society  have  greatly  improved,  and  it  seems 
now  to  have  every  prospect  of  a  continued  and  useful  existence 
on  scientific  lines.    Mr.  Wason  died  in  1921. 


CHAPTER  XVII 


In  the  middle  of  1903,  I  had,  to  a  great  extent,  recovered  my 
health,  and  began  to  feel  very  discontented  at  having  no  great 
work  in  hand. 

My  summer  holiday  of  sketching  in  Dorsetshire  was  inter- 
rupted by  the  news  of  Lord  Salisbury's  death.  I  attended  his 
funeral  at  Westminster  Abbey,  and  the  same  day — as  nearly  as 
I  can  recollect,  had  a  letter  from  Sir  Alfred  Harmsworth,  then 
proprietor  of  the  Daily  Mail,  asking  me  to  call  and  see  him  on  a 
matter  of  urgent  business.  I  guessed  what  it  was  about,  because 
a  day  or  two  earlier  I  had  realized  that  one  effect  of  this  death 
would  be  a  Parliamentary  vacancy  at  Rochester,  for  which  Lord 
Salisbury's  eldest  son,  the  present  peer,  sat  as  Member  of  Par- 
liament. 

My  relations  and  friends  connected  with  Rochester  had  written 
asking  me  to  come  forward,  and  contest  the  seat  from  the  Liberal 
standpoint.  So  the  day  following  I  went  to  see  the  celebrated 
Harmsworth.  He  took  me  from  the  offices  of  the  Daily  Mail  to 
the  Savoy  Hotel,  where  we  lunched  on  a  veranda  overlooking 
the  river.  "I  hear  you  are  going  to  stand  for  Rochester,"  he  said, 
"and  I  am  going  to  back  you  up  in  the  Daily  Mail  and  get  you 
elected.  You  are  standing  as  a  Liberal,  I  suppose?"  he  went  on. 
"But  I  do  not  care  under  what  designation  you  have  come  for- 
ward. I'm  sick  of  the  present  administration,  and  I  want  men 
like  you  to  get  into  Parliament."  I  said  frankly  that  the  situation 
had  developed  with  such  quickness  that  I  had  scarcely  had  time  to 
make  up  my  mind,  or  to  send  a  definite  answer ;  but  I  would  then 
and  there  decide  to  accept,  and  telegraph  accordingly. 

A  few  days  later  a  wonderful  article  on  the  leader  page  ap- 
peared in  the  Daily  Mail,  written  by  Philip  Gibbs.  The  terms  of 
the  article  were  so  laudatory  they  made  me  wince,  but  they 

369 


370 


THE  STORY  OF  MY  LIFE 


caused  my  supporters  at  Rochester  considerable  satisfaction.  My 
wife  and  I  went  down  there,  and  accepted  what,  I  must  admit, 
was  a  very  gracious  hospitahty  extended  to  us  by  a  Rochester 
family  of  old  standing,  with  whom  I  had  been  more  or  less 
acquainted  in  past  times.  The  head  of  the  house  subsequently 
figured  a  good  deal  in  the  municipal  history  of  Rochester. 

This  step,  of  course,  meant  a  break  with  the  Foreign  Office, 
though  I  lent  myself  to  no  criticism  of  that  Department  of  State. 
I  believed — and  believe  still — in  the  virtue  of  Free  Trade  from  a 
British  Islands'  point  of  view.  Joseph  Chamberlain  had  just 
come  out  as  an  advocate  of  Protection,  and  I  concentrated  my 
efforts  on  attacking  his  policy  in  that  respect.  I  had  a  most  curi- 
ous division  of  support.  The  Solicitor  to  the  British  South 
Africa  Company,  and  several  supporters  or  even  officials  of  the 
Chartered  Company  came  down  to  Rochester,  and  vehemently 
advocated  my  cause.  Rhodes,  of  course,  was  dead  the  year  pre- 
viously, but  some  of  his  associates  took  up  a  hostile  attitude. 
As  a  matter  of  fact,  it  was  the  Americans  at  Rochester  who 
decided  the  issue.  They  had  taken  in  hand  the  cement  industry, 
which  had  long  been,  and  is  still,  a  prominent  and  hideous  fea- 
ture in  the  Rochester  landscapes,  along  the  river-side,  turning  the 
chalk  of  the  Kentish  cliffs  into  cement  with  some  other  combi- 
nation. 

The  Americans  wanted  Protection,  to  increase  the  value  of 
British  cement.  A  very  large  number  of  their  employes,  together 
with  the  Irish  party  in  Rochester  (I  forget  what  industry  they 
were  concerned  with,  but  they  constituted  a  powerful  body  of 
voters),  turned  the  scale  against  me,  and  rather  to  my  surprise  I 
was  defeated  by  over  five  hundred  votes.  As  to  the  Irish  Ques- 
tion: I  probably  lost  the  backing  of  the  Irish  laborers  by  an 
unfortunate  lecture  on  Ireland  which  I  gave  with  mistaken  zest, 
illustrated  by  my  own  slides.  One  of  the  most  interesting  of 
these  showed  a  remarkable  calvarium  found  in  a  bog  in  Sligo 
and  exhibited  in  the  British  Museum.  Its  interest  lay  in  its  sup- 
posed resemblance  to  the  Neanderthal  type.  I  showed  this :  expa- 
tiated on  its  antiquity,  and  its  being  perhaps  (then)  the  most 


THE  STORY  OF  MY  LIFE 


371 


"anthropoid"  specimen  as  yet  discovered  in  the  British  Isles.  I 
was  carried  away  by  my  enthusiasm  in  seeking  for  evidences  of 
Man's  origin,  before  I  reahzed  that  this  was  not  electioneering. 
My  words  were  followed  by  an  icy  pause,  broken  by  an  Irish 
navvy  at  the  back  of  the  audience,  who  rose  and  said,  "As  to  the 
Irish,  they're  God's  own  people,  and  never  knew  an  ape." 

The  result  was  rather  a  blow  to  me,  but  my  speeches  had  ex- 
cited a  certain  amount  of  interest  and  even  enthusiasm  among 
Liberal  and  political  societies,  who  were  becoming  very  anti- 
Chamberlain.  They  begged  me  not  to  be  discouraged,  and  invited 
me  to  be  their  candidate  at  the  next  election,  for  this,  that,  and 
the  other  place. 

Feeling,  therefore,  that  I  was  now  committed  to  politics  as 
my  next  career,  I  decided  to  accept  the  call  from  the  West 
Marylebone  Liberal  and  Radical  Association.  It  may  have  been 
a  foolish  choice,  because  of  the  enormous  majority  to  beat  down, 
but  the  scene  of  the  activities  was  within  an  easy  walk  of  my 
home  in  Regent's  Park,  and  it  seemed  to  me  that  West  Maryle- 
bone might  be  contested  and  yet  not  interfere  with  literary  and 
newspaper  work  near  at  hand.  At  any  rate,  wisely  or  otherwise, 
I  accepted  their  invitation  in  January,  1904.  Meantime,  being 
very  exhausted  and  much  wanting  quiet  for  the  completion  of 
another  book,  I  again  accepted  Mrs.  Scott's  invitation  to  occupy 
her  house  at  Shere,  for  the  autumn  and  early  winter. 

Among  other  side  issues,  soon  to  take  up  an  important  part  of 
my  activities,  were  the  affairs  of  Liberia. 

Liberia,  the  Negro  Republic  on  the  west  coast  of  Africa,  had 
begun  to  interest  me  in  1882,  when  traveling  to  West  Africa  with 
Lord  Mayo.  Our  steamer  had  called  off  the  coast  to  recruit 
Kruboys.  I  do  not  think  I  landed,  because  of  the  surf,  but  I 
never  forgot  the  impression  of  the  magnificent  Forest  rising  up 
so  close  to  the  waves.  In  the  course  of  my  three  years'  Consular 
work  in  the  Niger  Delta  between  1885  and  1888,  I  had  a  great 
deal  to  do  with  Kruboys,  and  became  interested  in  their  home- 
land. I  landed  at  Basa  and  perhaps  Cape  Palmas  on  my  way 
home,  and  was  impressed  with  the  grandeur  of  the  forest  and  its 


372 


THE  STORY  OF  MY  LIFE 


botanical  interest.  I  used  also  to  hear  a  great  deal  about  Liberia 
from  the  eccentric,  amusing  Liberian  woman,  Emma  Jaja  John- 
son, who  acted  as  Secretary  to  King  Jaja. 

Colonel  Powney,  who  was  the  principal  person  coming  forward 
to  ask  me  to  take  an  interest  in  this  region,  was  an  officer  in  one 
of  the  Guards,  who  had  done  good  service  in  the  Sudan  wars, 
and  had  thenceforth  developed  an  interest  in  Africa.  (He  was 
the  descendant  of  Warren  Hastings's  Private  Secretary.)  He 
had  already,  before  meeting  me,  made  two  visits  to  the  Liberian 
forests,  and  these  travels  had  been  illustrated  by  a  member  of 
his  party  with  well-taken  photographs.  His  enterprise  had  been 
mixed  up  with  that  of  a  French  duke  and  a  Dutch  diplomatist, 
both  of  whom  had  begun  to  experience  what  I  might  term  an 
"intelligent"  interest  in  French  West  Africa.  The  French  asso- 
ciation, however,  had  turned  off  to  other  schemes,  and  parted 
with  their  rights  or  their  ambitions  to  Colonel  Powney's  group, 
which  had  been  incited  to  take  over  and  revive  a  moribund 
Liberian  enterprise  (with  Germans  at  the  back  of  it)  styled  a 
Chartered  Company,  and  brought  into  existence  by  some  long- 
past  President  of  Liberia  for  the  purpose  of  developing  the 
country's  trade. 

"Liberia"  had  begun  early  in  the  nineteenth  century,  as  an 
attempt  to  repatriate  a  portion  of  the  emancipated  Negroes  of  the 
United  States.  Everything  in  those  days  concerning  Africa  was 
conducted  in  ignorance  of  African  conditions.  Freed  slaves  in 
the  United  States  before  the  Civil  War  had  aroused  very  awk- 
ward questions;  and  in  the  'twenties,  'thirties,  and  'forties  the 
best  solution  seemed  to  be  to  ship  them  back  to  Africa  and  enable 
them  to  colonize  a  portion  of  the  African  coast.  So  the  region 
immediately  east  of  Sierra  Leone  was  fixed  on  for  this  purpose, 
and  an  elaborate  constitution  was  framed,  utterly  disproportion- 
ate to  the  feebleness  of  the  colonizing  effort.  The  chief  purpose 
of  these  laws  was  to  keep  out  the  European  or  the  non-African 
from  any  rival  settlement  or  interference  with  the  Negro  races. 

Under  these  conditions  Liberia  could  only  vegetate  as  an  enter- 
prise.  Its  vaguely-defined  territory  was  already  inhabited  by  two 


THE  STORY  OF  MY  LIFE  373 


to  three  millions  of  a  very  diverse  indigenous  population.  There 
were  Muhammadan  Mandingos  and  Vais  in  the  west  and  north; 
Kru  tribes  in  the  south  and  east,  and  unknown,  unclassified  sav- 
ages in  the  eastern  interior.  The  whole  of  these  two  and  a  half 
millions,  so  far  as  they  had  any  views  outside  their  village  inter- 
ests, objected  more  or  less  strongly  during  the  first  half  of  the 
nineteenth  century  to  this  planting  of  American  Negro  refugees 
on  their  coast.  They  would  not  have  objected  to  the  extension 
of  European  control,  but  they  did  not  want  colonies  of  "black 
foreigners"  amongst  them.  If  their  hostility  towards  "Liberia" 
lessened  as  the  century  drew  to  a  close,  it  was  only  because  of 
their  dread  of  the  French  advance. 

I  discussed  the  question  of  my  joining  the  Liberian  Company 
(as  a  Director,  in  some  advisory  capacity)  with  the  African  De- 
partment of  the  Foreign  Office,  and  they  were  favorable  to  the 
idea.  Lord  Lansdowne,  indeed,  saw  me  on  several  occasions  to 
discuss  the  question.  It  was  feared  at  the  Foreign  Office  in  those 
times  that  if  no  attempt  was  made  to  strengthen  British  com- 
merce in  Liberia,  the  whole  of  the  country  must  inevitably  come 
within  the  French  political  sphere  in  West  Africa,  since  the 
United  States  had  at  that  period  professed — or  seemed  to  profess 
— indifYerence  as  to  its  fate. 

The  British  Consul  in  Liberia  twenty  years  ago  was  Mr.  Eric 
Drummond,  a  "Consul  de  carrier e,"  who  had  previously  done 
good  work  in  Portuguese  East  Africa,  and  was  the  son  of  a 
British  Minister  in  Portugal.  Mr.  Drummond  was  anxious  that 
Liberia  should  be  set  on  her  feet  by  the  systematic  exploration 
and  use  of  her  rubber  forests  and  by  researches  into  her  mineral 
deposits.  Both  gold  and  diamonds  had  already  been  found  in  her 
territory  by  Colonel  Powney  and  his  associates. 

I  thought  the  best  course  to  pursue  before  making  any  public 
appeal  was  to  go  out  to  Liberia  and  see  the  whole  country  as 
thoroughly  as  possible.  I  chose  for  this  purpose  the  dry  interval 
of  the  summer-time,  between  the  two  rainy  seasons,  and  spent 
the  two  months  of  July  and  August,  1904,  visiting  the  President 
and  his  Ministers  at  Monrovia,  and  traveling  through  the  whole 


374 


THE  STORY  OF  MY  LIFE 


length  of  the  country  from  its  western  to  its  eastern  provinces  on 
the  boundary  of  the  Ivory  Coast. 

In  this  way  I  made  the  acquaintance  of  Mr.  Frank  Braham, 
who  had  been  sent  out  there  a  year  or  two  previously  by  those 
who  were  interested  in  the  Anglo-German  Rubber  Company.  Mr. 
Braham  and  I  visited  almost  every  place  on  the  coast  which 
could  possibly  become  a  port;  for  one  of  the  disadvantages  of 
Liberia,  like  so  much  else  of  the  west  coast  of  Africa,  was  its 
not  possessing  a  single  natural  harbor.  Such  places  as  Roberts- 
port  and  Monrovia  were  not  often  afflicted  by  a  heavy  surf  :  land- 
ings occasionally  were  quite  calm  and  unobstructed;  but  Basa, 
though  a  great  confluence  of  trade,  and  Cape  Palmas  were  nearly 
always  risky  for  the  landing  of  passengers  and  cargo. 

But  my  journeys  through  the  forests  of  the  interior,  though 
very  slow,  were  excessively  fatiguing,  because  one  had  practically 
to  walk  the  whole  way  in  tropical  hot  weather,  and  often  fol- 
low nothing  but  elephant  paths.  Yet  the  journeys  made  a  great 
impression  on  me,  because  of  the  splendid  timber,  the  abundance 
of  rubber-producing  trees  and  lianas,  and  the  extraordinary  vari- 
ety of  other  forms  of  vegetable  wealth — gum,  oils,  drugs,  and 
fiber.  I  had  read  Biittikofer's  two  volumes  on  Liberia  which 
were  published  in  the  'eighties,  and  therefore  before  entering  the 
country  was  more  or  less  acquainted  with  its  remarkable  fauna. 

As  the  result  of  this  first  long  journey,  I  returned  home,  con- 
vinced of  the  great,  inherent  wealth  of  this  curious  little  land, 
one  of  the  most  "distinguished"  portions  of  Africa  for  its  rich 
and  peculiar  fauna  and  flora.  I  had  brought  back  with  me  propo- 
sitions from  President  Barclay,  endorsed  by  his  Cabinet,  as  to 
what  might  be  done  to  strengthen  the  Chartered  Company,  and 
the  schemes  for  rubber  production,  provided  a  certain  amount 
of  capital  was  provided  by  Colonel  Powney  and  his  friends,  and 
the  consent  of  the  British  Government  was  obtained  to  a  degree 
of  support  which  might  tend  to  the  better  administration  of 
Liberia  and  to  the  settlement  of  its  frontier  delimitations  with 
Britain  and  France.  President  Barclay  was  aware  that  Colonel 
Powney  had  secured  the  participation  of  certain  French  capital- 


THE  STORY  OF  MY  LIFE 


375 


ists  in  the  management  of  the  projected  renewal  of  the  Chartered 
Company,  and  that  he  was  prepared  to  purchase  outstanding 
claims  from  the  Germans  and  get  them  annulled  or  transferred  to 
British  hands. 

Colonel  Powney  fulfilled  all  these  conditions,  and  the  British 
Government  consented  to  recognize  the  appointment  of  an  Eng- 
lishman as  Controller  of  the  Liberian  Customs,  and  other  meas- 
ures tending  towards  the  securing  of  interest  to  bond-holders  of 
the  existing  Liberian  State  debt.  Mr.  Austen  Chamberlain,  then 
Chancellor  of  the  Exchequer,  helped  the  Foreign  Office  in  vari- 
ous ways  towards  the  conclusion  of  an  arrangement  which  would 
obtain  for  Liberia,  under  proper  checks  and  guarantees,  a  loan 
from  some  financial  house  of  European  standing.  This  would 
regularize  and  facilitate  the  repayment  of  her  small  public  debt. 

All  these  schemes  were  communicated  frankly  to  the  United 
States,  who  had  unofficially  brought  Liberia  into  existence  many 
years  before.  No  American  objections  were  offered,  so  the 
schemes  went  forward.  The  Dunlop  Company  interested  itself 
in  the  rubber  question,  and  the  already  existing  Liberian  Char- 
tered Company  was  more  or  less  fused  with  the  former  Anglo- 
German  Company  for  developing  the  rubber.  I  agreed  for  a  time 
to  become  Managing  Director  of  both  companies,  and  started 
once  more  for  Liberia  in  November,  1905,  to  put  all  these  matters 
before  the  Liberian  House  of  Representatives  and  Senate,  and 
obtain  their  sanction  and  acceptance  of  the  scheme  of  the  Cus- 
toms' Control  and  the  repayment  of  their  public  debt. 

Things  in  British  politics  looked  very  shaky,  and  when  I  said 
good  bye  to  Lord  Lansdowne,  he  told  me  that  on  my  return,  he 
might  no  longer  be  Secretary  of  State  for  Foreign  Affairs.  In 
fact,  I  think  on  the  day  I  started  for  Liverpool  to  join  my  West 
African  steamer  I  heard  the  news  of  his  resignation.  But  it  did 
not  then  seem  likely  that  the  incoming  Liberal  Administration 
would  dissolve  Parliament  before  February  or  March. 

I  passed  an  excessively  anxious  December  in  Liberia.  German 
opposition  to  my  schemes  had  become  open  and  avowed,  but  the 
opposition  was  conducted  by  a  German  Consul  who  was  a  gentle- 


376 


THE  STORY  OF  MY  LIFE 


man,  and  did  nothing  underhand.  The  measures,  however,  were 
finally  passed  by  the  Liberian  Legislature  and  sanctioned  by  the 
President ;  and  the  German  Consul  on  the  morrow  of  this  settle- 
ment gave  me  a  congratulatory  luncheon  and  told  me  that  having 
done  his  best  and  failed,  and  cabled  his  failure,  he  had  been  re- 
warded by  the  transference  to  the  much  more  interesting  post  of 
Jerusalem.    So  we  parted  friends.^ 

When  I  reached  Sierra  Leone  in  the  returning  steamer,  I  read 
the  Renter's  telegrams  about  the  dissolution  of  Parliament  and 
the  coming  elections.  My  steamer  arrived  at  Plymouth  and  I 
learned  from  the  newspapers  that  the  election  had  been  held  at 
West  Marylebone  four  days  previously,  and  that  despite  the  gal- 
lant struggle  of  my  wife  and  my  friends  in  that  constituency,  I 
had  not  gained  the  seat,  though  I  had  reduced  the  Conservative 
majority  to  quite  a  slender  figure  as  compared  with  past  elections. 
My  wife  thought  that  if  the  affairs  of  Liberia  had  not  so  pro- 
vokingly  carried  me  off  at  the  time,  I  should  have  won  the  seat. 

However,  at  the  moment  I  considered  I  had  settled  the  fate  of 
Liberia  on  very  favorable  lines,  and  that  I  should  have  a  task  of 
great  interest  in  developing  her  resources  and  steering  her  to 
affluence  and  good  government. 

Here  I  was  soon  to  sustain  a  great  disappointment.  The 
French  Foreign  Ofiice,  with  whom  I  had  been  a  good  deal  in  com- 
munication in  1905 — going  over  to  Paris  to  discuss  the  Liberian 
problem  at  the  Quay  d'Orsay — changed  its  attitude  when  I  re- 
turned from  Liberia  in  1906,  believing  that  Sir  Edward  Grey,  un- 
like his  predecessor,  took  no  interest  in  the  fate  of  Liberia  and 
was  quite  willing  to  see  the  Negro  Republic  come  under  French 
control.  So  instead  of  signing  the  Frontier  Delimitation  agree- 
ment which  had  been  negotiated  with  the  permanent  officials  at  the 
French  Colonial  Office — especially  the  explorer  Under-Secretary, 
Colonel  Louis  Binger — they  deferred  doing  so,  accused  the  Li- 
berian officials  of  vexatious  interference  with  tribes  who  believed 

1 1  published  in  1906  a  work  in  two  volumes  entitled  Liberia  (through 
Messrs.  Hutchinson)  which  gives  a  full  description  of  the  country,  its  fauna, 
flora,  people  and  languages. 


THE  STORY  OF  MY  LIFE 


377 


themselves  to  be  under  l'>ench  protection,  and  intimated  pretty- 
clearly  they  were  going  to  settle  the  frontier  entirely  out  of 
regard  for  French  interests.  They  also  revived  other  vexatious 
demands  of  a  kind  calculated  to  inflame  the  fears  of  the  Liberi- 
ans.  By  an  unfortunate  conjuncture  of  events,  the  British  Gov- 
ernor at  Sierra  Leone  was  excited  by  exaggerated  news  regarding 
an  uprising  at  Monrovia  and  gave  orders  for  the  despatch  of  a 
British  force  to  Monrovia  to  maintain  order.  He  was  just  pro- 
ceeding on  leave  of  absence,  and  so  fortunately  the  Acting  Gov- 
ernor, Mr.  G.  B.  Haddon-Smith,  who  was  much  better  informed 
on  the  subject,  countermanded  the  detachment  of  West  Indian 
troops,  and  did  what  he  could  to  appease  Liberian  susceptibilities. 

But  the  French  Foreign  Office  had  decided  that  the  powers 
granted  to  the  Liberian  Chartered  Company,  the  establishment 
of  a  British  Customs'  Officer  (to  obtain  security  for  what  was 
virtually  the  British  loan)  were  all  against  French  interests. 
They  would  almost  sooner  have  German  preponderance  here  than 
British.  So  in  the  winter  of  1906  though  I  again  went  out  to 
Liberia,  it  was  to  find  enemies  instead  of  friends.  The  Legisla- 
ture revoked  or  annulled  its  concessions,  and  although  our  own 
Foreign  Office  intervened  at  this  stage  it  only  secured  the  con- 
tinuance of  a  simulacrum  of  a  Chartered  Company  and  a  rubber 
concession. 

To  finish  the  story  here  I  might  add  that  I  accepted  gratefully 
the  invitation  of  President  Roosevelt  to  come  over  to  the  United 
States,  and  discuss  the  Liberian  question  with  him  and  with  his 
Secretary  of  State.  He  also  wished  to  see  me  relative  to  the 
question  of  his  visiting  East  Equatorial  Africa,  when  he  could 
undertake  such  a  journey  after  leaving  the  Presidentship.  The 
Foreign  Office  approved  of  my  going,  and  (I  gathered)  would 
equally  approve  of  America  intervening  in  place  of  France,  Ger- 
many, or  Britain,  in  Liberian  afifairs,  and  resuming  her  former 
position  as  Protectress  of  the  Negro  Republic. 

So  at  Washington  in  the  autumn  of  1908  I  went  into  the  whole 
question  with  Mr.  Secretary  Root.  Eventually  there  was  substi- 
tuted for  the  British  Customs'  Officials,  an  American  control,  the 


378 


THE  STORY  OF  MY  LIFE 


French  frontier  was  settled;  and  the  Great  War  brought  about 
the  extinction  of  any  right  on  the  part  of  Germany  to  interfere 
in  the  fate  of  Liberia.  The  British  Companies  became  absorbed 
in  a  larger  American  undertaking. 

One  of  the  few  steps  I  had  taken  to  place  Liberian  affairs  on  a 
good  basis  was  maintained.  I  had  mentioned  at  the  beginning  of 
this  account  how  a  Dutchman,  Mr.  J.  P.  Crommelin,^  had 
explored  Liberia  in  connection  with  the  British  and  French 
companies.  He  had  begun  a  career  of  diplomacy  under  the 
Netherlands  Government,  and  had  been  Secretary  to  the  first 
Hague  Conference.  Then  owing  to  some  difference  of  opinion 
with  the  Dutch  Foreign  Office,  he  took  up  Liberian  affairs,  for  it 
must  be  remembered  that  all  through  the  struggles  of  this  unfor- 
tunate country  to  get  on  its  feet,  the  one  commercial  house  that 
seemed  to  prosper  permanently  was  the  Dutch  House  or  two 
allied  Dutch  houses  of  trade.  (Professor  Biittikofer — the  ex- 
plorer of  Liberia  in  the  'eighties — though  really  a  German,  did 
his  work  for  Dutch  Museums,  and  became  a  Dutch  citizen.) 
Holland  had  no  territorial  ambitions  in  this  part  of  West  Africa; 
so  President  Barclay,  on  my  advice,  chose  Mr.  Crommelin  to 
enter  the  Liberian  Diplomatic  Service  and  represent  his  country 
in  Paris  and  London,  which  he  continued  to  do  down  to  the  pres- 
ent day,  though  in  1922  he  resigned  the  diplomatic  post  in  Paris. 

Dutch  officers  were  also  chosen  to  act  in  the  frontier  delimita- 
tions with  France,  which  were  concluded  just  before  the  outbreak 
of  the  Great  War.  These  delimitations  revealed  the  fact  that  on 
the  Liberian  frontier  of  French  West  Africa,  there  existed  the 
highest  elevations  of  land  in  the  whole  of  West  Africa  to  the 
west,  that  is,  of  the  Lower  Niger.  The  actual  height  of  these 
mountains  which  look  down  on  the  Cavally  watershed,  is  not  far 
off  seven  thousand  feet. 

I  had  never  been  wholly  reconciled  to  a  London  residence, 
either  at  Queen  Anne's  Mansions,  or  in  Chester  Terrace,  Re- 
gent's Park.   The  bicycle  had  first  seemed  to  satisfy  my  craving 

1  Mr.  Crommelin  died  in  London  in  April,  1923. 


THE  STORY  OF  MY  LIFE 


379 


for  the  country.  I  would  bicycle  out  from  Regent's  Park  into 
Hertfordshire — seventeen  or  eighteen  miles — into  what  in  those 
days,  was  genuine  country,  without  newly-built  houses.  In  fact 
a  direct  ride  of  eight  miles  from  Regent's  Park,  would  bring  one, 
in  1903  or  1904,  into  what  seemed  the  countryside.  But  the 
remembrances  of  my  boyhood,  and  of  the  three  months  spent  at 
Walberton  in  1897,  drew  me  to  Sussex.  From  1903  onward  I 
took  houses  for  the  summer  months,  near  Arundel  and  not  far 
from  the  coast. 

In  1905  I  heard  of  a  house  to  let  at  Poling  Corner,  a  short 
distance  from  the  Arundel-Worthing  road.  I  bicycled  over  to 
see  it.  It  was  ostensibly  a  farmhouse,  which,  although  it  now 
bore  the  name  of  "St.  John's  Priory"  and  looked  like  a  Priory 
externally,  a  hundred  years  ago  had  been  known  as  "Fairplace 
Farm."  Its  exterior  and  its  gardens — then  remarkable  for  their 
roses  and  Madonna  lilies — captivated  my  eyes,  but  the  interior 
of  the  dwelling  was  very  disappointing :  dark,  poky  rooms ;  Vic- 
torian furniture;  stained  wall-papers,  discolored  by  incoming 
rain-water;  and  a  stone  flooring — ugly  and  chilly — to  the  hall, 
passages,  and  one  of  the  sitting-rooms.  But  the  setting  of  the 
house,  the  deodars  and  yews  bordering  its  lawns,  and  its  story  as 
revealed  to  me  in  Sussex  county  histories  made  such  an  impres- 
sion on  my  fancy  that  I  invited  my  wife's  examination  and 
opinion. 

She  decided  in  favor  of  our  taking  it,  as,  at  any  rate,  a  week- 
end cottage,  which  might  on  a  yearly  tenancy,  be  no  more  expen- 
sive than  a  furnished  house  taken  merely  for  the  summer  season. 
I  called  in  next  my  brother  Philip,  the  architect,  to  advise.  He 
was  immediately  enthusiastic.  The  house,  considering  it  was 
small  in  size,  had  a  remarkable  history.  It  had  been  built,  or 
begun  to  be  built  in  1 180,  by  a  religious  body,  which  soon  became 
identical  with  the  Community  of  St.  John  of  Jerusalem.  (Local 
opinion  associated  the  construction  of  the  house  with  the  Tem- 
plars, but  I  could  not  find  any  evidence  of  this.)  Three  knights 
of  St.  John  continued  to  reside  here  through  the  Middle  Ages 
down  to  as  late  as  1577;  when  after  some  real  or  imagined  Cath- 


380   '  THE  STORY  OF  MY  LIFE 


olic  conspiracy,  Queen  Elizabeth  bade  them  be  gone.  A  period 
of  confusion  ensued.  Their  stables  a  quarter  of  a  mile  to  the 
south,  became  an  independent  farmhouse ;  and  St.  John's  Priory 
(in  reality  known  as  "The  Commandery"  of  the  Knights  of  St. 
John)  was  renamed  "Fairplace  Farm." 

Curiously  enough,  the  history  of  St.  John's  Priory  was  given 
about  this  time — 1906 — by  Cardinal  Gasquet,  in  his  book  on  the 
Monastic  buildings  of  England.  "Fairplace  Farm"  was  re-named 
"St.  John's  Priory"  at  the  close  of  the  eighteenth  century. 
Thenceforward  it  was  tenanted  by  a  yeoman  family  in  successive 
generations,  but  belonged  to  a  series  of  different  owners  until  the 
'seventies  of  the  last  century,  when  it  was  purchased  by  the  Duke 
of  Norfolk  who  owned  much  of  the  surrounding  land. 

The  yeoman  family  (Blunden)  that  inhabited  it  for  more  than 
a  century  continued  its  tenancy  under  the  Duke,  and  developed 
some  fields  to  the  west  of  the  farm  land  as  a  noteworthy  Pottery. 
Here,  William  de  Morgan  came  down  to  work,  and  here  he  de- 
veloped a  wonderful  glaze. 

The  Blunden  tenant  of  St.  John's  Priory  apparently  brought 
himself  very  near  bankruptcy  over  the  attempt  to  make  this 
pottery  a  production  of  beautiful  things.  He  also  held  a  commis- 
sion in  the  Army,  but  he  finally  retired  from  the  tenancy  of  St. 
John's  at  the  close  of  the  nineteenth  century,  and  lived  at  Putney. 
It  then  had  a  succession  of  occupants,  mostly  military  officers 
having  work  in  the  neighborhood.  But  when  we  inspected  it,  its 
occupants  were  a  widow  and  her  son,  the  son  just  having  retired 
from  the  service  of  a  steamship  company. 

I  so  fell  in  love  with  the  place,  that  I  took  it  from  the  farmer 
who  farmed  all  the  surrounding  land,  without  very  much  thought 
as  to  permanency  of  tenure.  I  found,  however,  on  closer  enquiry, 
that  he  only  held  house  and  estate  on  a  yearly  agreement  from 
the  Duke  of  Norfolk.  I  therefore  appealed  direct  to  the  Duke 
and  his  agent.  They  settled  matters  with  the  farmer,  gave  me 
a  twenty-one  years'  lease  of  the  house,  and  four  acres ;  and  agreed 
to  bring  the  delicious  water  from  Swan  Pool  in  Arundel  Park, 
into  my  house  and  garden.  This  meant  laying  pipes  for  a  mile 
beyond  the  houses  of  Crossbush. 


THE  STORY  OF  MY  LIFE 


381 


We  found  ourselves  here  a  mile  and  a  half  from  Arundel  Sta- 
tion, and  only  a  minute's  walk  from  the  post-office  at  Poling 
Comer.  Arundel  Station  in  those  days  was  not  very  well  served 
by  trains  on  the  Brighton  and  South  Coast  Line.  The  Duke  of 
Norfolk  used  plaintively  to  refer  to  this  lack  of  convenience ;  but 
he  was  far  too  modest  a  person  about  his  own  wants  and  wishes 
to  intervene  with  a  Railway  Company.  However,  I  had  some  per- 
sonal acquaintance  with  the  Manager  of  the  Brighton  and  South 
Coast  Railway — Sir  William  Forbes  (the  brother  of  Stanhope 
Forbes,  R.  A.,  as  related  in  the  part  of  my  life  dealing  with  my 
student  days)  ;  so  I  put  the  matter  before  him,  with  the  result 
that  the  train  service  was  much  improved  by  certain  Portsmouth 
expresses  being  directed  to  stop  at  Arundel,  so  that  one  could 
make  the  journey — nearly  sixty  miles  from  London — in  an  hour 
and  a  half. 

My  brother  spent  nearly  a  year  remaking  the  interior  of  the 
house,  and  restoring  it  as  far  as  possible,  to  its  appearance  in 
Elizabethan  times.  The  gardens  were  remodeled  and  enlarged, 
and  I  decided  to  live  here  permanently.  So  I  let  my  house  in 
Chester  Terrace,  and  soon  afterwards,  to  my  great  relief,  was 
able  to  sell  the  lease. 

From  1906  onward,  St.  John's  Priory,  three  and  a  half  miles 
inland  from  the  sea  coast,  on  the  edge  of  far-stretching  woods 
(which  are  still  unspoiled,  though  the  Gypsies  nibble  at  them) 
has  been  my  permanent  home,  under  a  further  agreement  with  its 
Ducal  owner  which  secures  the  tenancy  for  the  duration  of  my 
life  and  that  of  my  wife. 

Near  by  was  another  plot  of  land  not  belonging  to  the  Duke  of 
Norfolk  which  contained  a  remarkable  cottage,  so  old  in  its  shap- 
ing and  its  looks  as  to  substantiate  the  more-or-less  well-founded 
story  of  its  dating  from  about  1000  a.c.  This  plot  and  cottage 
Lady  Anderson  purchased  from  its  owner  and  presented  to  us. 
The  cottage  was  in  such  disrepair  that  it  had  ceased  to  be  tenant- 
able,  but  we  reconstructed  its  interior  wholly,  while  leaving  undis- 
turbed the  ancient  roof  and  exterior  aspect,  and  it  became  for  me 
a  studio  and  work  room.  In  looking  up  records  and  examining 
the  structure.  I  found  out  the  history  of  the  building — how  it 


382 


THE  STORY  OF  MY  LIFE 


had  first  been  built  as  a  leper-house,  and  in  the  time  of  Elizabeth 
became  the  Poorhouse  of  the  neighborhood.  Then  it  remained 
fulfilling  this  purpose  for  Poling  until  the  building  of  the  East 
Preston  Workhouse  in  1857.  I  have  used  it,  in  the  middle  of 
its  garden  of  fruit-trees  with  a  tiny  stream  on  one  side  and  a 
hedge  all  round  of  roses,  as  a  room  in  which  to  work;  a  studio 
and  a  library.    It  exudes  peace. 


CHAPTER  XVIII 


The  affairs  of  Liberia  at  the  opening  of  1908  had  got  into  such 
a  condition  of  confusion,  owing  to  the  French  rapacity  on  the 
frontier  and  German  intrigues  for  permission  to  estabHsh  great 
wireless  stations  to  connect  up  their  Cameroons  domain  with  Eu- 
rope and  Brazil,  that  I  felt  a  strong  disposition  to  go  over  to  the 
United  States,  and  endeavor  to  put  before  the  American  Govern- 
ment the  whole  question.  I  think  this  idea  first  arose  from  con- 
versations with  the  American  Ambassador  in  Paris ;  but  one  of 
my  sisters  was  for  a  short  time  in  the  United  States  with  her 
husband,  and  met  President  Roosevelt.  She  found  he  was  inter- 
ested in  my  writings,  and  told  him  she  thought  I  would  gladly 
pay  him  a  visit  to  discuss  African  affairs  with  him  generally. 
Roosevelt  early  in  1908,  was  already  contemplating  the  idea  of  a 
visit  to  Equatorial  East  Africa,  when  his  tenancy  of  the  Presi- 
dentship should  have  expired. 

Mr. — afterwards  Viscount — Bryce,  whom  I  had  known  from 
time  to  time  at  the  Foreign  Office  or  in  politics,  had  gone  to  the 
United  States  as  Ambassador.  In  consequence  of  my  sister's 
conversation  with  the  President,  I  was  rather  startled  at  receiving 
in  Roosevelt's  characteristic,  bold  handwriting,  an  invitation  to 
come  and  visit  him  at  Washington,  and  discuss  East  African 
questions,  and  almost  by  the  same  post,  a  letter  from  Mr.  Bryce, 
offering  me  his  hospitality,  if  I  did  come. 

I  next  communicated  with  the  Foreign  Office,  pointing  out  how 
much  I  wished  clearly  to  understand  the  United  States'  intentions 
with  regard  to  Liberia.  Their  reply  was  decidedly  favorable  to 
my  going.  I  could  discuss  the  whole  question  with  Mr.  Secretary 
Root,  and  communicate  the  results  to  the  Foreign  Office. 

Mr.  Moberley  Bell  heard  from  some  source  of  my  projected 
journey  and  invited  me  to  write  a  series  of  articles  upon  it  for  the 

383 


384 


THE  STORY  OF  MY  LIFE 


Times.  I  had  for  some  time  past  wished  to  study  the  great  ques- 
tion of  the  eleven  milHons  of  Negroes  and  Negroids  in  North 
America  and  the  West  Indies.  So  I  proposed  when  my  visit  to 
the  States  was  over,  passing  on  to  the  Greater  and  Lesser  An- 
tilles, and  possibly  some  part  of  Central  America  and  northern 
South  America. 

President  Roosevelt  with  a  delicacy  characteristic  of  him,  no 
sooner  heard  that  I  was  coming,  than  he  induced  various  lecture 
agencies  or  newspaper  proprietors  to  propose  lectures  and  maga- 
zine articles,  the  payment  for  which  would  amply  cover  my 
expenses. 

So  I  started  from  Southampton  to  New  York,  in  an  exceed- 
ingly comfortable  steamer  of  the  White  Star  Line,  early  in  Sep- 
tember, 1908.  As  I  wished  to  do  a  great  deal  of  photography, 
and  also  was  not  in  very  good  health,  I  took  with  me  Mr.  Arthur 
Greaves,  who  was  for  a  long  time  in  my  employ,  and  who  had 
learned  to  become  a  very  accomplished  photographer.  My  voy- 
age to  New  York,  under  the  pre- War  conditions  then  prevailing, 
was  altogether  delightful.  I  was  given,  for  a  very  modest  outlay, 
a  sitting-room  and  bedroom  on  a  part  of  the  deck  near  to  the 
bandstand,  and  all  my  meals  were  served  in  the  sitting-room, 
whilst  I  thoroughly  enjoyed  the  excellent  music  discoursed  by 
the  band. 

My  arrival  at  New  York  seemed  almost  like  the  entrance  into 
a  fairy  tale.  The  steamer  was  berthed  at  sunset,  and  we  saw 
spring  into  existence  the  marvelous  display  of  lights — dazzling 
white,  deep  red,  bright  yellow,  pink,  blue,  and  green,  which  shone 
out  from  all  stages  of  the  giant  buildings,  one  or  two  of  them  750 
feet  high.  The  Customs  authorities  at  first  wished  to  charge  me 
duties  on  my  photographic  equipment.  I  was  too  over-awed  to 
commence  an  argument ;  but  the  fact  that  I  was  coming  to  stay 
with  the  President  decided  them  to  pass  my  boxes  of  films. 

We  first  drove  in  something  like  a  respectable  four-wheeler 
cab  through  a  maze  of  streets  to  an  hotel  with  a  celebrated  name. 
Here  I  only  spent  one  night,  in  an  unnecessarily  gorgeous  bed- 
room, after  consuming  meals  with  a  dazzling  menu.   But  here  I 


THE  STORY  OF  MY  LIFE 


385 


was  visited  soon  after  my  arrival  by  a  kind  friend  who  had  made 
my  acquaintance  in  London,  and  come  down  to  visit  me  in  Sus- 
sex.   This  was  Dr.  Leander  Chamberlain. 

Dr.  Chamberlain  was  a  widower,  and  a  widely  traveled  man^ 
interesting  himself  more  especially  in  the  Roberts'  Colleges  and 
the  troublesome  affairs  of  the  Balkan  Peninsula.  His  brother, 
General  Chamberlain,  had  been  a  rather  well-known  Northern 
Governor  of  one  of  the  Southern  States  after  the  Civil  War.  Dr. 
Chamberlain  advised  me  to  transfer  myself  and  my  attendant, 
Mr.  Greaves,  to  the  Chelsea  Hotel,  a  building  somewhat  like 
Queen  Anne's  Mansions  in  its  arrangements  and  array  of  stories. 

Here,  for  quite  a  modest  outlay  (in  those  days),  I  secured 
really  comfortable  quarters,  with  a  fine  outlook  over  New  York, 
and  a  balcony  from  which  to  gaze  on  the  marvels  of  the  city.  I 
had  a  dining-room,  drawing-room,  two  bedrooms,  and  a  bath- 
room, and  I  could  either  have  my  meals  in  my  own  dining-room, 
or  in  the  restaurant  below. 

The  only  fault  I  could  find  in  the  whole  arrangement,  was  the 
too  great  efficiency  of  the  warming  apparatus.  New  York  in 
September  is  still  undergoing  summer  heat,  and  until  I  mastered 
the  heating  apparatus  so  as  to  shut  off  the  warm  air,  I  had  to  sit 
with  all  the  windows  and  doors  open.  Dr.  Chamberlain  instructed 
me  in  all  these  matters,  and  proved  to  be  a  delightful  guide  to  the 
wonders,  the  amazements,  of  New  York.  He  took  me  several 
excursions  up  country  to  places  made  famous  in  American  litera- 
ture. Then  I  went  to  stay  with  my  sister  at  Cambridge  near 
Boston,  and  gave  several  lectures  under  the  kindly  guidance  of 
Dr.  Charles  Eliot,  just  about  to  retire  from  the  Presidency  of  the 
Harvard  University. 

Then  came  the  journey  to  Washington,  under  such  conditions 
of  luxury  in  railway  traveling,  as  I  had  not  hitherto  tasted  in 
Europe.  I  proceeded  first  of  all  to  the  British  Embassy,  a  large 
and  imposing  building  in  the  vastness  of  Washington,  standing  in 
its  own  grounds,  but  the  grounds  suggesting  then  a  somewhat 
forlorn  appearance  of  publicity  and  a  suggestion  of  perpetually 
open  gates  and  the  right  of  the  populace  to  stroll  round  the  house. 


386 


THE  STORY  OF  MY  LIFE 


Once  in  the  house,  and  under  Mrs.  Bryce's  regime,  we  were 
not  only  completely  comfortable  and  with  a  sense  of  being  at 
home,  but  there  was  the  same  agreeable  sense  of  detachment  and 
independence  that  I  had  experienced  in  the  Viceroy's  palace  at 
Calcutta.  However,  soon  after  my  arrival,  I  became  unwell,  a 
hideous  condition  when  attendant  on  the  more  limited  scope  of 
ordinary  hospitality.  But  here,  though  the  Bryces  came  to  see 
me  and  to  sympathize,  I  just  stayed  in  my  own  suite  of  rooms, 
until  I  was  well  again,  and  the  Embassy  doctor  treated  my  lec- 
ture-shattered nerves  in  the  right  way,  and  made  me  feel  once 
more  robust. 

One  of  my  first  excursions  was  to  Philadelphia,  and  the  next 
enterprise  was  an  educational  visit  to  the  Hampton  Institute  in 
the  northern  part  of  Virginia.  (On  the  way  thither  I  stopped  at. 
Richmond,  and  saw  some  of  the  sites  of  noteworthy  battles  in  the 
Civil  War.) 

Hampton  was  a  great  undertaking,  originally  founded  by  one 
of  the  most  noteworthy,  working  philanthropists,  General  S.  C. 
Armstrong.  It  was  a  much  earlier  undertaking  than  Tuskegee, 
and  was  established  to  serve  not  only  the  Negro  and  the  Negroid, 
but  the  aboriginal  Amerindian.  There  was  much  in  this  estab- 
lishment to  please  the  eye.  The  site  was  a  park  of  flat  land  by 
the  banks  of  a  gleaming  river.  There  were  noble  clumps  of  trees, 
far-stretching  lawns,  flower  beds  and  flower  borders,  and  par- 
terres of  shrubs.  The  colleges,  the  lecture  halls,  the  guest-houses 
and  residences  for  the  students,  male  and  female,  were  all  comely 
to  the  eye.  There  was  not  a  waste  piece  of  paper  in  sight.  The 
grass  was  very  green,  the  geraniums  were  very  scarlet,  the 
Michaelmas  daisies  richly  mauve,  and  all  the  students  were  well 
and  seemly  dressed. 

My  eye  was  drawn  particularly  to  the  Amerindian  students, 
men  and  women.  Emphatically  civilized  and  well-dressed, 
combed,  and  with  their  hair  in  due  restraint  or  neat  array.  It 
was  sometimes  difificult  to  conclude  that  they  were  of  Amerindian 
race.  They  were  lighter  in  complexion  for  the  removal  of  pre- 
historic smoke-film. 


THE  STORY  OF  MY  LIFE 


387 


The  principal  of  this  College  was  Dr.  Frissell.  There  were 
many  noteworthy  professors,  male  and  female,  on  the  stafif,  but 
one  of  them  interested  me  more  than  the  others.  This  was  Mr. 
Thomas  Jesse  Jones,  a  Welshman,  born  and  bred,  of  wit  and 
discernment.  Though  he  was  a  nice-looking  man,  he  belonged, 
as  he  humorously  explained,  to  that  dark  type  of  southern  Welsh- 
man who  is  particularly  Iberian  or  North  African  in  appearance ; 
and  he  complained  that  this  slight  suggestion  of  the  pre-historic 
negroid  worried  him  at  times  when  his  journeys  extended  into 
the  Southern  States.  He  was  apt  to  feel  timorous  as  to  whether 
his  brown  eyes  and  dark  hair  might  not  cause  him  to  be  recom- 
mended by  a  tram-conductor  or  railway  official,  to  take  the  car  or 
portion  of  the  car,  reserved  for  people  of  color. 

He  has  since  come  much  into  general  knowledge  by  his  jour- 
neys with  other  American  delegates  through  Africa,  and  through 
his  lectures  and  writings  on  the  scope  of  African  education. 

I  saw  much  at  Hampton  which  interested  and  impressed  me. 
If  there  were  anything  that  checked  my  sympathy  and  conversa- 
tion, it  was  the  very  religious  tone  then  prevailing. 

The  chief  object  in  coming  to  Washington  was  to  see  Roose- 
velt, both  before  and  after  other  excursions.  The  White  House 
is,  of  course,  a  palace.  Every  room  and  the  furniture  of  every 
room  at  the  time  I  first  saw  it  was  something  to  be  admired  in 
architecture,  design  and  decoration ;  and  the  extreme  comfort  and 
aptness  of  its  appointments  must  have  impressed  most  visitors. 
But  in  1908  it  gave  me  the  impression — perhaps  a  mistaken  one 
— of  not  ofifering  an  excessive  amount  of  accommodation  for  the 
President's  Staff.  I  was  honored  by  the  allotment  of  an  historical 
bedroom,  the  room  in  which  President  Lincoln  had  signed  the 
edict  enfranchising  over  four  million  slaves  in  1865.  Greaves 
had  a  bedroom  at  no  great  distance,  and  what  I  thought  showed 
such  a  sense  of  hospitality,  was  that  the  President,  after  bursting 
into  my  room  to  greet  me  and  see  that  I  was  comfortable,  passed 
along  the  passage  to  ascertain  the  same  fact  as  to  my  companion. 

Some  of  the  meals  were  banquets,  with  the  numbers  of  guests, 


388 


THE  STORY  OF  MY  LIFE 


the  forms  and  ceremonies  of  reception  and  withdrawal,  the 
menus  and  the  wines  (it  was  before  the  days  of  Prohibition)  one 
would  have  expected  in  the  royal  palaces  of  a  first-class  power. 
But  the  breakfasts,  the  teas  in  the  afternoon,  and  occasionally  a 
luncheon  or  a  Sunday  dinner  were  en  famille,  and  Mrs.  Roose- 
velt, whose  bonhomie  and  kindly  informality  "rested"  her  guests, 
played  the  part  of  a  hostess  in  private  life.  In  fact,  I  thought 
the  breakfasts  particularly  homely  in  a  pleasant  way.  The  chil- 
dren took  their  places  with  curt  greetings,  exclaimed,  chuckled, 
pouted  over  their  correspondence,  or  over  the  eggs  being  either 
hard-boiled  or  not  boiled  enough.  Roosevelt  divided  his  atten- 
tions between  his  trays  of  correspondence  and  his  breakfast  dishes 
or  cups  of  coffee;  and  Mrs.  Roosevelt  showed  me  the  patterns 
from  which  she  was  invited  to  select  materials  for  winter  gar- 
ments. 

After  the  stately  dinners  (at  each  of  which  one  met  exceed- 
ingly interesting  people — Governors  of  States,  of  West  Indian 
Islands,  or  the  Philippines,  heads  of  Oxford  Colleges,  ambassa- 
dors, inventors,  soldiers  and  sailors)  Roosevelt  would  take  me 
away,  when  he  had  bidden  his  formal  farewell  at  ten-thirty,  to 
some  upper  room  furnished  more  like  a  studio,  with  natural  his- 
tory specimens  or  examples  of  modern  inventions.  Here,  Chinese 
tea  or  Mocha  coffee  would  be  served  to  us,  but  here  alone  we 
would  talk  and  argue  until  midnight  or  even  one  o'clock. 

I  think  I  have  never  spent  my  time  with  any  man  more  inter- 
esting. He  knew  the  things  on  which  he  spoke,  yet  by  no  means 
monopolized  the  conversation,  either  at  banquets,  at  cosy  meals, 
or  in  these  retired  duologues. 

He  would  lead  out  the  head  of  Oriel  College  to  discourse  on 
the  Latin  and  the  literature  of  the  fifth  century  after  Christ;  and 
then  he  himself  would  give  a  wonderful  and  arresting  account  of 
the  Tartar  occupation  of  Russia,  between  1200  and  1400  a.c. 
Or  one  of  his  guests  might  be  a  German  oologist.  He  would  see 
that  he  told  us  enough  about  rare  birds'  eggs,  without  becoming  a 
bore.  He  would  ascertain  that  the  Governor  of  the  Philippines 
was  competent  to  describe  the  Negroid  population  of  the  jungles, 


THE  STORY  OF  MY  LIFE 


389 


before  he  gave  vent  to  any  opinion  which  might  be  detected  as 
inaccurate  by  the  Dutch  ethnologist  seated  next  him. 

I  have  never  known  such  a  house  for  universality  and  detail ; 
for  kind  and  practical  anxiety  as  to  my  foot-gear's  adaptability 
to  the  appalling  snow-fall  which  began  in  the  middle  of  this  visit, 
the  suitability  of  my  outfit  for  the  West  Indies,  or  the  extent  of 
my  worry  over  Liberian  affairs,  or  lecture  engagements. 

After  two  visits  to  the  White  House,  separated  by  an  interval 
of  lecturing  at  Philadelphia  and  a  study  of  the  Hampton  Institute, 
most  reluctantly  I  bade  Roosevelt  farewell,  and  started  with  the 
Bryces  on  a  seven-hundred-mile  railway  journey  to  Alabama. 
Mr.  Bryce  wished  to  make  some  personal  acquaintance  with 
Booker  Washington's  great  and  growing  establishment  at  Tus- 
kegee,  and  as  I  w-anted  to  settle  down  there  for  a  time  to  study 
this  educational  experiment  he  proposed  escorting  me  thither  and 
making  up  a  party  which  was  to  include  Dr.  Chamberlain.  The 
idea  extended  as  it  was  shaped,  and  ended  in  our  all  going  as  the 
guests  of  Mr.  R.  C.  Ogden. 

Mr.  Ogden  was  a  millionaire  philanthropist,  whose  acquain- 
tance I  had  made  in  New  York.  He  and  a  few  others  of  the 
same  city,  had  done  much  to  finance  the  experiment  of  Booker 
Washington  at  Tuskegee.  I  think  also  he  was  connected  with 
the  railways  that  led  thither.  At  any  rate,  he  had  a  sumptuous 
railway  car  or  series  of  cars,  which  could  be  attached  to  trains, 
and  in  which  we  all  made  the  journey  from  New  York  and 
Washington. 

We  had  to  leave  Washington  quite  early  in  the  morning  to 
catch  the  train.  It  had  snowed  heavily  for  two  days  previously, 
although  we  were  only  in  the  early  part  of  November.  The  jour- 
ney from  the  Embassy  to  the  station  seemed  to  me  hazardous,  as 
though  the  two  motors  might  never  reach  the  railway  but  become 
snowed  up  in  the  streets.  The  snow,  indeed,  had  been  so  heavy, 
and  rose  so  high,  that  it  effaced  the  plan  of  Washington.  How- 
ever, we  had  started  with  a  good  allowance  of  time,  and  we 
reached  the  station  entrance  with  no  serious  drawback.  Abrupt, 
indeed,  was  the  change  from  Siberian  conditions  to  comfort  and 
cosiness. 


390 


THE  STORY  OF  MY  LIFE 


Mr.  Robert  Ogden's  cars  were  in  readiness  in  a  siding.  We 
stepped  into  absolute  twentieth  century  conditions.  There  was 
a  long  car,  with  at  one  end  a  glass  door  which  opened  on  to  a 
sheltered  "observation"  ending,  a  long  table  laid  with  a  tempting 
breakfast,  a  library  of  books  in  between  the  numerous  windows, 
sofas,  and  chairs.  There  was  a  party  assembled  of  about  twenty, 
which  we  raised  to  twenty-five  or  twenty-six;  for  Lord  Eustace 
Percy,  one  of  the  Embassy's  staff,  traveled  with  us.  But  there 
was  ample  bedroom  accommodation.  I  had  a  bed  compartment 
to  myself,  which  also  included  a  bathroom!  At  eight  o'clock  we 
sat  down  to  breakfast  in  high  spirits;  and  about  the  same  time 
left  the  station,  attached  to  a  southern  express. 

As  the  day  wore  on  it  was  most  interesting,  watching  the  grad- 
ual change  of  climate  from  arctic  conditions  at  Washington  to 
those  of  an  April  spring  at  Raleigh  and  Atlanta. 

At  Atlanta,  I  fancy,  we  had  a  considerable  wait,  an  hour  per- 
haps, enough  time  to  go  on  a  rapid  excursion  in  a  motor  to  see 
something  of  the  town.  At  some  other  great  station  we  dined  in 
the  car.  We  went  to  bed  early,  and  awoke  to  the  sunshine  and 
flowers  of  May  in  the  State  of  Alabama,  though  I  noticed  even 
here,  the  bananas  had  their  fronds  frizzled  with  an  unexpected 
touch  of  frost. 

At  Tuskegee  I  was  given  very  comfortable  quarters,  in  one  of 
the  guest-houses — a  bedroom,  bathroom,  and  sitting-room. 

Booker  Washington,  as  I  saw  him  in  1908,  was  a  mulatto  of 
pale  cafe-au-lait  complexion,  with  a  negroid  nose  and  lips,  and 
yet  an  odd  look  of  an  Italian  about  his  eyes  and  face.  So  far  as 
he  had  any  knowledge  of  his  descent,  he  was  the  son  of  a  negress 
in  Virginia,  and  of  a  man  named  Tagliaferro,  either  born  in  Italy 
or  of  Italian  descent,  who  had  become  overseer  in  the  slave  plan- 
tation where  Booker  Washington  was  born.  Much  of  this  is 
supposition  on  his  part  or  mine;  but  in  his  appearance,  his  quick 
movements,  his  eye-glances,  he  used  to  remind  me  of  the  Italian 
models  I  had  painted  when  a  student  at  the  Royal  Academy. 

He  was  in  many  respects  a  marvel,  for  he  had  risen  up  from 
the  very  dregs  of  slavery,  and  acquired  an  astounding  amount  of 


THE  STORY  OF  MY  LIFE 


391 


education.  He  spoke  English  with  comparatively  little  American 
accent,  and  wrote  it  as  any  good  English  author  might  have  done. 
He  was  witty — so  witty  that  one  never  tired  of  hearing  his  public 
addresses,  though  they  were  in  most  cases  impromptu. 

There  was  scarcely  any  subject  one  could  not  discuss  with  him, 
and  find  him  well  prepared  with  theories  or  opinions;  or  if  he 
knew  little  of  the  subject,  very  ready  to  Hsten  to  any  one  who  had 
made  a  study  of  it.  I  formed  also,  a  high  opinion  of  his  wife. 
She  was  his  third  wife,  her  predecessors  having  died  in  childbirth. 
She  was  rather  a  silent  woman,  though  quite  able  to  converse  in 
English  as  good  as  her  husband's,  when  the  subject  interested  her. 
She  was,  I  suppose,  what  is  technically  called  an  octoroon,  but  to 
a  casual  observer,  she  might  have  been  mistaken  for  a  Spanish 
woman  of  distinguished  presence. 

As  I  wish  to  tell  the  whole  truth,  there  was  only  one  thing 
about  my  stay  with  Booker  Washington  which  perplexed  me,  and 
that  was  the  diet! 

Neither  the  fare  nor  the  cooking  and  presentation  of  it  were 
anything  near  the  level  of  civilized  advancement  characterizing 
everything  else  at  Tuskegee.  It  was  so  startling  in  difference 
from  the  wholesome  fare  and  delicious  cooking  I  had  experi- 
enced hitherto  in  America  in  all  the  hotels  and  on  the  railways, 
that  it  caused  me  embarrassment.  My  lack  of  appetite  was  com- 
mented on  by  my  host  and  hostess,  and  yet  when  I  forced  myself 
to  avoid  their  anxious  enquiries  by  swallowing  without  tasting, 
I  induced  indigestion. 

Fortunately  it  was  ordained  that  I  should  breakfast  in  my 
separate  quarters,  and  there  I  made  a  good  square  meal,  cooked 
for  me  by  some  kindly  person,  generally  by  Greaves  himself. 

One  of  the  most  interesting  personages  at  Tuskegee  was  Pro- 
fessor Carver,  a  full-blooded  negro,  who  spoke  English  as  though 
he  had  been  brought  up  at  Oxford.  He  was  the  Professor  of 
Botany.  I  had  not  time  to  sound  his  knowledge  of  the  botany 
of  Africa  or  Tropical  Asia,  but  no  one  I  ever  met  in  the  New 
World  taught  me  so  much  about  the  plant  distribution  in  North 
and  South  America. 


392 


THE  STORY  OF  MY  LIFE 


Thanks  to  his  influence  and  his  expert  knowledge,  I  was  sent 
on  a  most  delightful  excursion  with  one  of  his  Negro  assistants, 
to  visit  the  magnolia  forests  of  Alabama.  Destruction  of  their 
beauty  was — alas ! — proceeding  at  a  great  rate,  chiefly  at  the 
hands  of  white  men,  and  I  dare  say  now  something  of  their 
charm,  their  diversified  color  and  majestic  growth  is  dissipated.  It 
was,  of  course,  the  late  autumn,  though  I  suppose  no  actual  winter 
ever  reigned  so  far  south.  But  the  time  of  year  possibly  only  ac- 
centuated the  color  effects.  In  the  unspoiled  forests  magnificent 
magnolia  trees  with  glossy,  dark-green  leaves  and  compact  masses 
of  foliage  stood  regularly  placed — so  to  speak — amid  intense 
green  pines,  black-green  cypresses  and  yews,  glaucous-green  fan- 
palms,  yellow-green  oaks  of  permanent  foliage,  hickories  and  per- 
simmons of  twisted  gray  branches,  and  other  trees  unknown  to 
me,  some  of  them  exhibiting  in  their  foliage  the  autumn  colors  of 
the  North — lemon-yellow,  brick-red,  scarlet  and  crimson.  Near 
the  ground  the  Michaelmas  daisies  of  mauve  were  in  full  blossom. 
Numerous  seed  vessels  were  magenta  in  color. 

I  have  seen  many  types  of  primeval  forest  in  the  Tropics,  the 
Semi-Tropics  and  the  Temperate  Zone,  but  none  which  presented 
such  a  range  and  combination  of  bright  tints  as  the  woods  of 
Alabama,  Louisiana,  and  Florida.  In  Florida  one  had  almost  an 
excess  of  the  gray-green  "Spanish  moss"  (in  reality  an  aberrant 
pineapple! — exactly  like  in  appearance  the  Old-World  lichen 
known  as  "Old  Man's  Beard").  But  these  gray  streamers  were 
not  so  prominent  in  Alabama. 

The  roads  through  these  beautiful  woods  were  fantastically 
bad;  but  we  managed  to  drive  over  them  in  that  exceedingly 
adaptable  vehicle — the  American  buggy.  Every  now  and  then  we 
would  descend  to  the  still  water  of  a  bayou,  and  see  the  moss- 
grown  limbs  and  mighty  trunks  of  trees,  which  had  once  served 
as  hiding  places  for  runaway  slaves.  My  educated  Negro  guide 
told  me  that  in  some  of  these  bayous  have  been  found  the  sub- 
fossil  remains  of  both  tapirs  and  jaguars,  and  some  other  mam- 
malian types  which  did  not  nowadays  extend  east  of  Texas. 

At  the  close  of  my  stay  in  Tuskegee  I  had  several  frank  discus- 


THE  STORY  OF  MY  LIFE 


393 


sions  with  Booker  Washington  alone,  or  occasionally  with  some 
of  his  professors  on  the  scope  and  character  of  Negro  education. 
I  had  felt  at  Hampton  precluded  from  such  discussions,  because 
Dr.  Frissell,  however  genial  he  might  be,  had  evidently,  together 
with  some  of  his  leading  men  and  women  assistants,  a  strong 
religious  bias.  Other  directors  of  education  in  the  Eastern  and 
Southeastern  States  were  still  more  prejudiced  and  old-fashioned 
in  the  kind  of  curriculum  they  laid  down  and  enforced  in  Negro 
universities  and  colleges. 

I  do  not  know  whether  any  great  change  has  taken  place  since 
1909,  but  I  venture  to  reproduce  a  few  paragraphs  which  I  wrote 
on  the  subject  at  that  time  regarding  the  public  curriculum  for 
superior  Negro  education  in  the  United  States. 

"The  Negro  students  were  offered  in  Greek  : — the  Anabasis  of 
Xenophon,  the  works  of  Homer  (Iliad  and  Odyssey),  and  of 
Thucydides ;  Demosthenes'  Oration  on  the  Crown  and  Olynthiacs 
and  Philippics;  Plato's  Apology;  the  Tragedies  of  Euripides  and 
Sophocles,  the  Prometheus  Bound  of  ^schylus;  the  works  of 
Aristotle  and  Herodotus;  and  the  Greek  New  Testament  (besides 
the  Old  Testament  in  Hebrew !) .  In  Latin : — Caesar's  Gallic  War, 
several  books  of  Sallust,  Virgil's  Aineid,  Horace  in  his  Odes  and 
Epodcs,  Satires  and  Epistles,  Cicero  on  Friendship  and  on  Old 
Age,  and  in  his  Oration  against  Catiline;  and  other  'old,  unhappy 
things  of  long  ago' ;  Livy  on  the  Second  Punic  War ;  and  Tacitus 
on  the  Germans  of  the  opening  years  of  the  Christian  Era.  etc., 
etc.,  etc. 

"In  the  name  of  true  religion  and  of  common  sense,  of  Man's 
all-too-short  life  on  this  wonderful  planet,  of  the  necessity  of 
teaching  the  principles  of  forest  preservation  and  disease  preven- 
tion, of  respect  for  beautiful  birds,  remarkable  beasts  and  other 
wonderful  life  forms,  of  all  that  should  make  the  seven  years  of 
studenthood  fruitful  in  real,  useful  learning,  can  not  some  termi- 
nation be  put  to  this  fetishistic  nonsense,  this  solemn  cant,  this 
abominable  waste  of  time  and  brain-power?  How  many  ideas 
are  there  in  any  of  these  classical  writers — except  perhaps  Plato, 
Aristotle,  and  Homer — which  can  not  be  for  the  ordinary  man 


394 


THE  STORY  OF  MY  LIFE 


and  woman  crystallized  into  a  dozen  quotations  in  English  ?  But 
this  mistaken  passion  for  the  Greek  and  Roman  classics  seems 
peculiar  to  Protestant  Christians  in  Britain,  Germany  and  the 
United  States.  It  is  as  if  when  their  ancestors  boldly  left  some 
State  Church  to  found  another  sect  of  Christianity,  they  were 
more  than  ever  concerned  to  show  themselves  'orthodox'  in  the 
'Classics.'  So  they  carried  the  worship  of  Hebrew,  Greek  and 
Latin,  to  a  mania.  Is  it  not  time  this  nonsense  was  brought  to 
an  end  in  the  rational  United  States  ? 

"From  the  foregoing  diatribe  I  ought  perhaps  to  except  partly 
the  Shaw  University  of  Raleigh,  North  Carolina,  in  which 
Greek  is  stated  to  be  'optional,'  and  German  is  taught  with  some 
care,  besides  French.  But  why  not  Spanish  and  Portuguese f 
Here  we  have  the  United  States  with  a  population  of  nearly  ninety 
millions  impinging  on  and  also  ruling  countries  in  which  the  lan- 
guage spoken  (by  many  millions)  is  Spanish;  and  trading  and 
deeply  concerned  with  a  sister  republic  of  equally  vast  area — 
Brazil — wherein  the  language  of  twenty  millions  is  Portuguese, 
and  I  doubt  whether  there  is  a  single  School,  College,  or  Univer- 
sity in  the  United  States,  White  or  Negro,  in  which  either  Span- 
ish or  Portuguese  is  taught  or  encouraged." 

Booker  Washington  had  been  so  generously  supported  by  mil- 
lionaires in  New  York  and  New  England :  Andrew  Carnegie  had 
sumptuously  endowed  his  Institution,  erected  magnificent  build- 
ings there,  and  endowed  him  with  a  life  income  which  enabled 
him  to  live  in  comfort  and  without  anxiety  as  to  the  maintenance 
and  education  of  his  large  family;  that  he  was  most  anxious  not 
to  offend  their  religious  prejudices  in  the  curriculum  of  his  teach- 
ing. Yet,  though  he  had  passed  through  the  emotional  religious 
phase  in  his  earlier  years,  he  had  come  out  of  it  with  little  more 
definite  faith  than  myself.  Andrew  Carnegie,  so  far  as  I  could 
judge,  was  little  more  obsessed  with  doctrinal  religion  than  my- 
self, but  there  were  some  five  or  six  very  strong  backers  of 
Tuskegee  who  were  religious  to  an  oppressive  and  primitive 
degree.  Such  men  believed  steadfastly  in  the  Six  Days  of  Crea- 
tion and  would  deeply  have  resented  any  exposition  of  Darwin- 


THE  STORY  OF  MY  LIFE 


395 


ism  in  the  school  curriculum.  They  might — they  probably  did 
— take  Evolution  quite  calmly  when  expounded  from  Columbia 
or  Western  Reserve  Universities  to  White  students;  but  they 
seemed  to  think  that  these  doctrines  might  have  a  disastrous  effect 
on  the  Negro  mind.  These  same  ideas  apparently  influenced 
down  to  1910  much  of  the  teaching  of  the  Negro  in  South  Caro- 
lina as  directed  by  good  northern  white  women,  who  were  still 
continuing  to  stuff  the  young  Negroes  with  out-of-date  nonsense 
drawn  from  the  Mosaic  books  and  compiled  in  past  centuries 
when  Christians  knew  nothing  of  the  vastness  of  the  Universe. 
The  devotion  of  these  women,  their  sweetness  of  disposition 
(when  one  met  them),  and  their  up-to-date  acquaintance  with 
medicine  and  hygiene  made  it  difficult  for  me  to  discuss  the  ques- 
tion with  any  ruthlessness.  One  direction  in  which  I  tried  out- 
spokenness and  sometimes  wounded  feelings  was  in  the  matter 
of  music. 

I  was  enormously  impressed  with  the  beauty  of  the  voices  in 
the  singing  of  Negro  men  and  women  at  Tuskegee,  Hampton, 
and  other  centers  of  education;  but  I  soon  got  weary  of  the 
verbal  rubbish  of  the  hymns,  and  still  more  the  plantation  songs, 
to  which  their  talent  was  directed.  Their  voices  (or  indeed  their 
organ,  violin,  and  piano  playing)  were  of  such  quality  that  they 
might  without  fear  of  failure  have  attacked  the  grandest  of  grand 
opera,  though  I  admit  words  and  themes  of  operatic  songs  are 
nearly  as  idiotic  as  the  worst  hymns.  So  I  compromised  (in  my 
talk)  on  recommending  the  Gilbert  and  Sullivan  operas  to  their 
attention.  Why  might  not  these  be  learned  by  the  students  at 
Tuskegee  or  Hampton? 

Until  I  visited  America  I  had  always  thought  that  Negro  plan- 
tation songs  were  of  the  Christy  Minstrel  type,  or  even  of  the 
joyous  "coon"  variety.  But  it  was  not  so.  With  two  or  three 
exceptions  I  could  not  ascertain  that  a  single  one  of  the  popular 
"nigger"  songs  which  came  from  America  to  England  between 
1860  and  recent  years,  were  ever  initiated  or  composed  by  Negro 
musicians.  The  plantation  songs  "boosted"  by  philanthropic 
white  people  and  sung  by  the  colored  students  in  the  States  where 


396 


THE  STORY  OF  MY  LIFE 


in  most  cases  of  Negro  invention  during  the  slavery  days,  and 
sung  to  Methodist  hymn  tunes  of  the  eighteenth  century  of  Eng- 
Hsh  or  French  origin.  None  of  these  melodies  seemed  to  have 
come  from  Africa.  The  words  were  usually  sad,  wistful  remind- 
ers of  a  Land  of  Glory,  of  bright  mansions  beyond  the  grave,  or 
very  materialistic  definitions  of  the  passage  from  Life  to  Death 
"over  the  River,"  and  of  the  sober  joys  to  be  experienced  in  Para- 
dise. Here  are  the  words  of  one  of  these  songs,  very  popular  at 
Tuskegee  in  1908: — 

"March  de  angels,  march, 
March  de  angels,  march. 
My  soul  arise  in  Heaven,  Lord — 
For  to  see  when  Jordan  roll, 
De  Prophet  sat  on  de  tree  of  Life 
For  to  see  when  Jordan  roll. 
Roll  Jordan,  roll  Jordan,  roll  Jordan,  roll." 

Of  what  Negro  composers  and  performers  could  be  capable  (if 
they  managed  to  get  away  from  pietistic  fetters,  and  compose  and 
sing  as  free  from  religious  swaddling-clothes  as  Jewish,  English, 
German,  and  French  composers)  might  have  been  seen  in  those 
early  years  of  the  twentieth  century  in  the  performances  of  the 
Williams  and  Walker  Company  and  two  or  three  other  troupes  of 
Negro  actors  and  actresses.  I  think  I  have  laughed  more  heartily 
and  been  more  impressed  with  the  original  melodies  of  the  comic 
opera  In  Dahomey  than  over  any  other  stage  presentation  of  its 
period.    I  have  seen  it  acted  in  London  and  in  the  United  States. 

All  this  question  has  been  treated  by  me  at  considerable  length 
in  my  book  on  The  Negro  in  the  New  W arid.  I  commend  this 
book,  though  it  was  published  as  long  ago  as  1910,  to  the  reading 
of  any  one  interested  in  the  subject.  Because  of  its  plain  speak- 
ing, it  was  unpopular  in  England,  and  almost  tabued  in  the  United 
States,  though  its  writer  strove  to  tell  nothing  but  the  truth. 

From  southern  Alabama  and  southern  Georgia  I  went  north- 
wards to  the  great  mining  center  of  Birmingham.    This  was  a 


THE  STORY  OF  MY  LIFE 


397 


great  city,  not  unlike  the  British  Birmingham  in  its  appearance 
though  it  lay  twenty  degrees  nearer  to  the  Equator.  But  it  stood 
on  rather  high  ground  at  the  southern  termination  of  the  Appa- 
lachian Highlands.  On  the  outskirts  of  the  town  (which  in  its 
center  was  handsomely  built,  commodious,  and  supplied  with 
excellent  shops)  there  were  visible  hundreds  of  tall,  big  chimneys, 
puffing  out,  night  and  day  with  scarcely  a  Sunday  rest,  volumes 
of  black  or  white  smoke.  Here,  in  guarded  loneliness,  were  situ- 
ated the  great  steel  works  and  iron  foundries  of  Bessemer  and 
Ensley,  where  a  large  number  of  Negroes  were  employed,  con- 
jointly with  white  Americans,  in  work  that  involved  intelligence, 
strength,  courage,  and  a  just  appreciation  of  the  dangers  involved 
in  the  harnessing  of  the  forces  of  fire,  steam,  and  electricity. 

To  an  imaginative  person  the  journey  was  not  unlike  a  visit  to 
some  marvelously  realistic  reproduction  of  Dante's  Hell,  such  a 
reproduction  as  might  conceivably  have  been  constructed  by  some 
eccentric  American  multi-millionaire  as  a  realistic  warning  to 
that  strange  American  public,  white  and  black,  two-thirds  of 
which  probably  believes  more  strongly  in  Hell  than  in  any  other 
detail  of  the  Christian  cosmogony. 

We  traveled — my  companion  ^ — and  I,  in  tram  cars  which 
rushed  along  roads  as  quickly  as  trains.  The  outskirts  of  Birm- 
ingham are  diversified  with  low  red  hills  covered  with  a  sparse 
wood  of  low  growth,  which  might  be  pleasingly  picturesque  but 
for  the  blasting  effects  of  smoke.  In  and  out  of  the  trees  are 
placed  many  villas  of  diversified  design,  some  of  them  really 

1  Mr.  J.  O.  Thompson,  a  collector  of  revenues  in  Alabama,  to  whom  I  owed 
indeed  much  intelligent  assistance  in  my  investigations.  He  took  me  into 
southern  Georgia,  where  we  rode  or  drove  for  miles  through  beautiful  scenery 
and  stayed  at  comfortable  farmhouses  of  extraordinary  aloofness.  Here  we 
seemed  to  have  gone  back  in  time  to  the  'sixties,  and  to  be  living  the  life  de- 
picted by  writers  like  Louisa  Alcott,  the  author  of  Little  Women,  or  Elizabeth 
Wetherell  in  The  Wide,  Wide  World. 

My  hostess  would  ask  me  numerous  questions  about  Queen  Victoria  as 
though  the  period  was  about  1866.  We  ate  the  things  described  in  the  stories 
I  have  mentioned,  slept  in  beds  and  bedrooms  appropriate  to  that  period, 
were  taken  out  to  hunt  'possums,  and  lived  the  American  life  of  sixty  years 
ago.  Mr.  Thompson  made  these  journeys  the  more  delightful  because  he  was 
in  himself  distinctly  of  1908. 


398 


THE  STORY  OF  MY  LIFE 


pretty  and  none  of  them  of  shoddy  construction.  We  changed 
cars  outside  of  a  great  Stadium  where,  at  the  moment,  a  football 
match  was  proceeding  before  an  assembly  of  many  thousand 
miners  and  factory  hands  (this  and  everything  else  about  Birm- 
ingham was  like  the  England  of  the  northwestern  Midlands). 
Then  again,  careering  northwards  in  the  rapid  tram  car,  we 
passed  through  suburbs  of  thickly  packed  artisans'  houses,  till 
at  last  the  tram  line  came  to  an  end,  and  we  were  on  the  verge  of 
the  Forbidden  City,  not  a  labyrinth  of  which  might  be  entered 
save  by  special  permission,  or  by  those  who  were  of  the  calling. 

Against  a  splendid  sunset  stood  up  rows  of  tall  black  chimneys 
in  close  rank,  belching  incredible  volumes  of  black  smoke,  while 
here  and  there  arose  solitary  chimneys  pouring  out  white  smoke. 
The  greater  part  of  the  foreground  was  occupied  by  vast,  gaunt 
antres — colossal  iron  buildings,  painted  red  and  enshrining  Hell. 
Towards  these,  bewildering  railway  lines  converged ;  detraining 
the  damned  at  the  portals  of  Inferno;  the  night  shift,  that  is  to 
say,  for  the  great  Steel  Works.  We,  being  of  another  world, 
were  stopped  at  the  entrance,  but  a  short  colloquy  furnished  us 
with  a  one-armed,  silent  Vergil.  With  him  we  passed  through 
the  great,  red  iron  gate ;  and  then  more  by  gesture  than  by  speech, 
were  warned  of  all  the  chances  of  immediate  death  on  every  side 
— from  locomotives,  if  we  walked  between  the  railway  tracks; 
from  electricity  if  we  stepped  here;  boiling  water  if  we  ventured 
under  this,  or  a  rain  of  golden,  molten  metal  if  we  gazed  up 
at  that. 

Never  have  I  walked  more  circumspectly  or  at  first  felt  more 
reluctant  to  intrude.  But  the  irresistible  fascination  of  the  won- 
derful sights  led  us  on :  led  us  through  a  region  of  machinery 
hung  with  mystic  blue,  mauve,  and  red  lights  into  a  vast  space, 
the  roof  of  which  seemed  as  high  as  the  firmament,  where  the 
increasing  roar  of  steam  and  flame  nearly  stunned  one  to  insensi- 
bility. Yet  this  universality  of  deafening  sound  was  cut  from 
time  to  time  by  still  more  insistent,  agonizing  yells,  as  of  tortured 
spirits,  and  one  occasional  awful  alto  voice — the  Devil  himself, 
no  doubt.   Mercifully,  the  volume  of  sound  lessened  just  as  I  was 


THE  STORY  OF  MY  LIFE 


399 


feeling  I  could  no  longer  retain  consciousness,  yet  dared  not  sit 
down  for  fear  of  being  burned  up.  Then  I  began  to  notice  there 
was  a  method  amid  this  madness,  that  clever  Negro  devils  were 
at  work  cutting  and  shaping  with  huge  machinery  an  endless  suc- 
cession of  white-hot  iron  bars,  fish-plates,  rails  and  cylinders; 
acting  apparently  under  the  direction  of  a  golden-haired,  blue- 
eyed  youth — an  archangel,  no  doubt,  fallen  from  the  Heavenly 
Host.  Some  of  his  attendant  devils,  coal-black  with  soot  or 
grime,  climbed  perpendicular  ladders  out  of  sight  into  the  vasti- 
tude  of  the  roof,  visiting  as  they  went  casements  (containing  as 
it  were  imprisoned  souls)  into  which  they  plunged  instruments  of 
torture.  Each  step  they  took  up  the  rungs  of  the  ladders  was 
marked  by  blue  electric  flames. 

We  climbed  iron  bridges,  descended  iron  steps,  and  sidled  be- 
tween hideous  dangers,  until  we  reached  the  central  Hell  of  all, 
a  building  longer  and  higher  than  the  eye  could  follow.  Speech 
was  an  impossibility,  and  sight  was  occasionally  blinded  by  the 
activities  of  a  volcano  which  irregularly  sent  up  showers  of 
molten  stars  and  clouds  of  awful  luminosity.  Turning  my  back 
on  this  pulsating  flare,  I  was  aware  of  Negroes  traveling  to  and 
fro  on  chariots  of  blue  flame,  directing  the  infernal  couplings 
of  gigantic  pistons  which  lunged  continually  at  cells  and  fed  them 
with  molten  metal.  Each  thrust  was  followed  by  shrieks  and 
shrieks. 

At  last,  we  reached,  half-blinded,  a  cooler  region,  lit  by  lamps 
of  violet  and  blue.  Here  lay  sullenly-cooling  masses,  cylinders, 
rods  and  rails  of  red  iron  and  steel,  which  at  times  would  scream 
and  gasp  under  jets  of  steam,  as  though  expressing  uncontrollable 
agony.  Negroes  and  a  few  white  men  (though  their  complexions 
differed  in  no  way,  and  one  only  discriminated  by  the  hair) 
banged,  hammered,  cut  and  shaped  these  crude  substances  into 
finished  implements.  And  then,  at  the  end  of  our  sight-seeing, 
we  emerged  into  the  cold  fading  daylight,  into  an  amphitheater 
of  blasted  hills,  quarried  and  scarred,  in  the  search  for  iron  and 
limestone.  Near  at  hand  were  the  pit-mouths  of  the  coal-mines, 
and  thither  were  trooping  White  and  Negro  miners  in  their  work- 


400 


THE  STORY  OF  MY  LIFE 


ing  clothes,  whilst  others  strode  homewards  to  their  brick  cot- 
tages, to  wash  and  change,  and  enjoy  the  respectable  amusements 
of  Ensley. 

From  Birmingham  I  descended  in  altitude  to  the  dreary  Mis- 
sissippi State,  the  autumn  landscapes  of  which  I  described  in  my 
book,  pointing  out,  however,  the  contrast  between  the  ugliness  of 
the  landscapes,  and  the  health,  vigor,  and  good  looks  of  the  inhab- 
itants. "The  men  are  tall,  essentially  virile,  and  often  handsome. 
The  women  are  so  usually  good-looking,  that  a  female  with  a 
homely  face  is  a  startling  exception." 

Making  my  headquarters  at  Greenville — at  that  day  described 
by  me  as  a  combination  of  palaces  and  mud,  "splendid  public 
and  private  buildings,  shocking  roadways,"  I  made  trips  on  the 
Mississippi  River,  to  see  the  steamers  made  celebrated  by  Mark 
Twain,  to  see  them,  moreover,  stopping  here,  there  and  elsewhere 
to  pick  up  the  bales  of  cotton.  And  I  paid  a  visit  to  Mound  Bayou 
and  the  Yazoo  Delta,  to  inspect  an  interesting  Negro  Settlement. 

I  next  journeyed  due  south  to  New  Orleans.  From  this  lap 
of  luxury — the  interesting  old  city  was  rendered  beautiful  by  its 
opulent  suburbs,  growing  many  kinds  of  palm — I  journeyed  far 
to  the  westward  through  Louisiana,  staying  at  delightful  tree- 
shrouded  mansions,  built  perhaps  a  hundred  years  before.  In 
this  way  I  reached  the  State  of  Texas,  which  owing  to  other  calls 
on  my  time,  proved  to  be  my  farthest  west.  Then  ensued  another 
journey  through  southern  Georgia,  which  brought  me  at  last  to 
Jacksonville,  the  capital  of  Florida. 

Through  Florida  I  plied  my  camera  extensively,  recording  the 
wonderful  forests  of  pine  and  palm  and  magnolia,  wreathed  with 
Spanish  moss,  and  at  last  embarked  on  the  strange  new  railway 
which  skirted  the  coast  of  Florida  from  island  to  island,  till  at 
length  it  reached  an  islet  just  short  of  Key  West. 

Hence  a  steamer  took  us  across  to  Havana  or  Habafia,  the 
famous  capital  of  Cuba.  The  island  of  Cuba  was  then  still  under 
United  States  control  and  military  occupation. 

Already  in  the  winter  of  1908-9,  the  American  Government 


TH1<:  STORY  OF  MY  LIFE 


401 


had  been  able  to  record  the  abolition  of  Yellow  Fever,  tlianks  to 
the  heroism — resulting  in  a  few  deaths — of  American  surgeons, 
the  extirpation  of  mosquitoes,  and  other  measures  conducted  by 
the  United  States  on  an  heroic  scale. 

They  were  simultaneously  engaged  (with  the  co-operation  of 
the  British  in  the  Bahama  Islands)  in  extirpating  the  Hook-worm 
disease,  which  had  for  two  centuries  afflicted  Florida  and  the 
Antilles,  as  well  as  many  other  countries  in  the  American  Tropics, 
the  Mediterranean  Basin  and  India.  My  book  on  The  Negro  in 
the  Nezu  World  deals  with  this  matter,  which  has  received  far  too 
little  attention  in  the  Press. 

From  Cuba  I  passed  to  Haiti,  and  with  the  potent  assistance 
of  the  American  Minister  and  Consul-General,  saw,  studied,  and 
photographed,  the  life  and  scenery  of  that  American  Negro 
Republic. 

Haiti,  in  those  days,  was  still  independent.  The  food  and  the 
cooking  were  predominantly  French.  Life  at  Port-au-Prince  was 
fairly  comfortable,  and  decidedly  cheap  as  compared  with  Cuba. 
But  when  you  passed  into  the  interior  it  was  difificult  to  find  food 
and  suitable  lodging,  though  the  scenery  was  everywhere  of 
astounding  beauty — mountains  rising  to  over  eight  thousand  feet, 
pines  on  their  summits,  palms  on  their  lower  flanks,  arboreal  cacti, 
fuchsias,  and  mahogany  trees  up  and  down  their  slopes.  Above 
three  thousand  feet  the  air  was  delicious  and  invigorating.  But 
the  Negro  inhabitants,  at  any  distance  from  the  big  towns,  lived 
very  much  as  they  have  done  in  Africa.  The  men  thought  nothing 
of  going  about  stark  naked,  especially  near  the  water.  The  wom- 
en, on  the  other  hand,  were  clothed  with  an  excess  of  bunchy 
garments.  The  officials  were  excessively  dressed,  with  enormous 
epaulettes  on  tattered  uniforms.  The  administration  of  the  coun- 
try was  still  military-mad,  giving  the  whole  of  its  attention  to  a 
ragged  army  or  an  equivalent  force  of  rebels. 

One  was  attracted  by  the  extraordinarily  good  French  and 
clever  literature  published  by  the  educated  Haitians,  most  of  them 
formerly  pupils  of  some  French  college.  But  the  two  millions  of 
Haitian  Negro  cultivators  did  not  speak  French.    Their  tongue 


402 


THE  STORY  OF  MY  LIFE 


was  an  entirely  independent  patois  founded  on  French,  which  had 
come  into  existence  from  two  to  three  hundred  years  ago.  It  is 
somewhat  similar  to  the  dialect  of  the  French  West  Indies  and 
French  Guiana,  though  I  fancy  in  each  instance  the  local  patois 
has  grown  into  a  separate  language,  which  differs  more  decidedly 
from  true  French  than  Negro  English  does  from  literary  English. 

From  Haiti  I  passed  into  the  Spanish-speaking  republic  of 
Santo  Domingo.  Here  there  was  far  less  Negro  blood  and  inter- 
mixture. Some  of  the  soldiers  in  the  army  were  distinctly  hand- 
some men,  little  else  than  dark-complexioned  Spaniards.  Santo 
Domingo  had  already  been  brought  under  American  control  and 
advice,  and  here  and  there  in  its  forests  and  on  its  mountains 
(which  are  the  highest  in  all  the  West  Indies — ten  to  eleven 
thousand  feet)  were  isolated  Americans  lent  by  the  United 
States,  and  very  white-complexioned  in  contrast  to  the  indigenous 
Santo  Domingans. 

Then  I  embarked  on  a  British  steamer,  and  passed  on  to 
Jamaica. 

Here  I  renewed  acquaintance  with  Sir  Sidney  Olivier,  then 
Governor,  but  for  a  long  time  previously  a  clerk  and  under- 
secretary at  the  Colonial  Office.  Fie  gave  me  all  the  facilities 
which  could  be  afforded  for  studying  the  Negro  question  in  this 
island,  and  led  the  way  in  some  of  my  journeys  of  inspection. 

Apart  from  him  I  visited  with  Greaves  and  the  camera  the 
exceedingly  interesting  region  in  the  northeast,  which  had  been 
the  scene  of  many  disturbances  and  risings  among  the  Negroes 
that  had  occurred  both  before  and  after  the  emancipation  of  the 
slaves.  This  district  did  not  seem  to  me  entirely  pacified  even  in 
1909,  and  although  I  was  as  placatory  as  possible,  the  attitude  of 
the  people  was  sometimes  surly  and  aggressive.  The  scenery,  as 
everywhere  else  in  Jamaica,  was  of  exceeding  beauty,  owing  to 
the  richness  and  variety  of  the  vegetation,  the  variation  of  levels, 
the  mountain  peaks,  and  river  plains,  the  heavy-foliaged  trees, 
the  delicate  palms,  the  bamboos  and  bananas,  the  waterfalls  and 
grottos  in  the  lime-stone. 

The  capital  of  the  island,  Kingston,  seemed  to  me  in  process 


THE  STORY  OF  MY  LIFE 


403 


of  construction,  but  the  newer  parts  were  well  laid  out.  They 
had  good  hotels,  attractive  shops,  and  beautiful  public  gardens. 
The  port,  with  its  shipping,  its  sunsets  of  unearthly  brilliance  and 
its  very  variegated  human  types — Negroes  and  Negroids  of  every 
grade  from  nearly  white  to  glossy  black,  many  of  them  red- 
haired  and  blue-eyed,  with  olive  skin;  its  Jamaica  Jews  like  a 
handsome  Mediterranean  people,  its  occasional  East  Indian  kulis 
or  Chinese  settlers,  its  fair-haired,  sun-tanned  Britishers  and 
Americans — was  always  a  spectacle  of  interest  and  artistic  effect. 
Then  the  journey  up  winding  roads,  through  glorious  forests  of 
the  greatest  altitudes  in  the  island,  over  seven  thousand  feet,  where 
one  attained  an  English  atmosphere,  with  sharply  cold  mornings. 

The  roads  in  Jamaica  were  everywhere  excellent.  Motors  had 
hardly  penetrated  the  island  then,  but  carriages  well-shaded  and 
comfortable  could  be  hired  most  cheaply.  They  were  driven  by 
Negro  coachmen  of  civility  and  good  manners,  full  of  informa- 
tion. They  drove  one  through  gullies  growing  fifty  genera  of 
ferns ;  past  gigantic  precipices  of  purple-gray  rock  thickly  planted 
with  self-sown  palms  on  every  ledge;  past  grottos  in  the  lime- 
stone, and  elements  of  scenery  which  recalled  to  one  repeatedly 
the  language  of  The  Tempest.  One  imagined,  indeed,  that 
Shakespeare's  conception  of  Prospero's  Island,  though  it  may 
have  been  originated  by  the  "still  vex'd  Bermoothes"  must  have 
been  drawn  from  some  mariner's  glimpse  of  Jamaica,  rather  than 
from  the  much  tamer  scenery  of  the  low-lying  Bermuda  Islands. 

At  Kingston  I  saw  the  Agent  of  the  Royal  Main  Steamship 
Company,  and  learned  from  him  that  I  was  to  be  the  guest  of  the 
Line  from  that  point  homewards,  however  I  might  vary  and 
extend  the  voyage.  So,  having  seen  in  some  detail  the  three  prin- 
cipal West  Indian  Islands,  I  decided  to  go  to  Panama,  with  a 
latent  commission  from  Mr.  Roosevelt  to  join  Mr.  Taft's  mission 
of  inspection  of  the  Canal,  in  course  of  construction  across  the 
Isthmus.  The  steamer  landed  us  at  Colon,  surely  then  one  of 
the  most  dismal  cities  in  Central  America?  One  saw  it  still  at  a 
mid-nineteenth  century  phase.  There  was  one  gigantic  hotel,  like 
a  rabbit  warren;  hideously  hot;  rackingly  noisy  with  children's 


404 


THE  STORY  OF  MY  LIFE 


wails,  and  the  chatter  and  quarrels  of  Italian  and  Spanish- 
American  women. 

The  food  was  bad  and  badly  cooked,  the  mosquitoes  were  un- 
paralleled, and  the  prospects  in  view  from  the  wide,  rain-swept 
verandas,  discouraging  and  ugly.  The  roads  were  in  course  of 
re-construction,  or  rather  first  construction,  having  hitherto  been 
untended  tracts  of  heavy  dust,  or  at  this  period  of  unfathomable 
mud. 

I  joined  Mr.  Taft's  party  at  the  railway  station,  and  traveled 
with  it  slowl}'  across  the  Isthmus.  Inside  the  train  it  was  com- 
fortable enough,  and  Mr.  Taft's  party  was  chiefly  fed  on  fare 
brought  from  the  United  States. 

On  arrival  at  what  might  be  called  New  Panama — the  Canal 
Construction  city — we  were  specially  lodged  in  a  palatial  hotel, 
just  constructed  in  a  vast  area  of  suburb  built  under  mosquito 
netting.  Here  we  were  told  we  could  not  possibly  be  ill,  as  no 
mosquito  could  get  at  us  to  infect  our  veins  with  the  virus  of  any 
tropical  disease. 

Nevertheless  the  heat  and  the  airlessness  of  this  blameless 
enclosure  made  me  feel  unwell  and  depressed,  and  I  was  in  a 
hurry  to  get  out  of  it  into  the  open  air,  with  my  camera.  Old 
Panama  had  some  element  of  Spanish  picturesqueness.  One  felt 
oneself  here  and  there  in  touch  with  the  adventurous,  buccaneer- 
ing band  of  Henry  Morgan. 

On  the  return  journey — having  said  good  bye  to  Mr.  Taft — I 
felt  myself  freer  and  happier,  though  outside  any  protection  from 
mosquitoes. 

I  trafificked  for  gorgeous  macaws  along  the  palm-leaf  huts  of 
Jamaica  Negroes  or  Italian  navvies.  I  did  not  buy  one,  realizing 
the  trouble  of  conveying  it  home.  But  the  expenditure  of  an 
occasional  dollar  in  pourhoires,  enabled  one  to  pass  in  review  a 
collection  of  these  gorgeous  birds  without  giving  ofifence. 

The  return  to  Colon  was  followed  by  a  few  dismal  days  which 
nearly  had  a  tragic  ending,  for  my  re-entry  into  the  large,  squalid, 
noisy,  smelly  hotel,  v/as  followed  by  a  period  of  five  days'  bad 
weather — thunder,  lightning,  a  raging  gale,  and  torrents  of  rain. 
The  Royal  Mail  Steamer  was  sighted,  and  was  just  visible  from 


THE  STORY  OF  MY  LIFE 


405 


our  bedroom  windows,  but  until  the  violent  wind  abated,  she 
could  not  draw  up  alongside  the  imperfect  quay,  and  none  of  the 
boatmen  would  risk  their  boats  to  go  out  to  her  in  the  wide  bay. 
Would  she  give  up  the  venture  and  steam  away,  and  must  we 
then  remain  in  this  hot,  exhausting,  steamy,  noisy  place  for 
another  week  or  ten  days  ?  We  could  not  sleep  in  the  hot  nights ; 
we  were  oppressed  with  drowsiness  in  the  days  of  incessant  rain. 
There  was  something  in  the  atmosphere  which  made  one  feel  so 
ill,  one  could  do  no  work;  otherwise  I  might  have  amused  myself 
by  writing  down  the  strange  dialects  spoken  by  the  Italians;  or 
by  inspecting  the  relics  of  the  French  occupation  in  the  'eighties, 
or  the  still  more  ancient  and  nowadays  very  musty  history  of  the 
British-built  Panama  railways. 

However,  one  morning  the  wind  lessened,  the  terrific  surf 
abated,  and  the  steamer  was  descried  leaving  her  anchorage  and 
approaching  the  wharf. 

Greaves  was  all  to  the  fore.  Much  of  our  luggage,  in  default 
of  porters,  he  carried  himself  to  the  pier,  and  had  it  massed  there 
on  a  truck  borrowed  from  the  railway  station  almost  by  the  time 
the  steamer  came  in  contact. 

As  soon  as  the  bridge  was  lowered  for  passengers,  I  went  up 
it  with  an  exaggerated  feeling  of  relief,  as  though  in  a  few  steps 
I  passed  from  the  most  squalid  unhealthy  portion  of  the  Tropics 
to  my  own  home  country.  The  captain,  officers,  crew,  accommoda- 
tion, and  food  of  the  Magdalcna  seemed  to  me  of  the  very  best. 
From  a  setting  like  this  one  could  look  back  on  dreary  Colon  with 
tolerant  pity  even  though  the  steamer  stayed  there  another 
twenty-four  hours.  When  she  left,  and  the  Isthmus  of  Panama 
faded  away  on  the  horizon,  the  weather  returned  to  dry  geniality. 
As  we  approached  the  north  coast  of  Colombia,  we  saw,  rising 
into  the  upper  air,  the  snow-crowned  peaks  of  the  Sierra  de 
Perijo  and  anchored  in  the  port  of  Cartagena.  The  snow- 
crowned  mountains  of  nineteen  thousand  feet,  in  this  northeast- 
ern prolongation  of  the  Andes,  were  far  more  clearly  seen  to  the 
eastward  of  the  great  river  Magdalena. 

I  suppose  we  must  have  drawn  up  alongside  the  pier  at  Carta- 
gena, because  there  seemed  to  be  no  difficulty  about  passing  to  and 


406 


THE  STORY  OF  MY  LIFE 


from  the  shore.  I  entered  the  city  with  such  a  picturesque  his- 
tory, a  httle  anxious  lest  the  countrymen  of  Drake  should  feel 
under  any  disability  of  handed-down  dislike.  But  the  towns- 
people were  either  indifferent  or  civil.  The  old  town  was  as 
picturesque  as  Havana,  but  some  of  the  great  new  buildings  on 
the  outskirts  seemed  stagey  and  over-picturesque.  At  the  next 
port  at  which  we  called  (Santa  Marta),  we  were  more  in  touch 
with  primitive  South  America  and  closer  to  the  cloud-capped 
Andes.  Considerable  numbers  of  Amerindians  of  the  Chibchan 
tribes  came  on  board,  proffering  for  sale  monkeys,  parrots,  and 
handsome  jaguar  skins.  Of  these  last  I  bought  three,  one  of 
them  almost  as  large  as  the  hide  of  a  Malay  tiger. 

Our  steamer  passed  through  and  close  to  the  Dutch  islands  of 
Curagoa,  the  little  realized  possession  of  Holland  off  the  coast 
of  Venezuela;  we  caught  a  passing  glimpse  of  La  Guayra;  and 
then  soon  afterwards  steamed  through  the  Dragon's  Mouth  to 
the  anchorage  of  the  capital  of  Trinidad,  Port  of  Spain. 

The  steamer  stopped  at  a  considerable  distance  from  the  shore 
owing  to  the  shallowness  of  the  harbor,  which,  however,  is  pro- 
tected from  the  rough  seas  by  the  nearness  of  the  opposite  Vene- 
zuelan coast. 

Port  of  Spain  as  a  town  made  a  favorable  impression  on  me, 
influenced  of  course,  by  the  beauty  of  its  setting.  Here  are  a  few 
notes  penciled  in  a  memorandum  book : — 

"The  majestic  cliffs  and  pierced,  fantastic  islands,  crowned  and 
draped  with  forests.  Above  them  storm-clouds  of  superb  shape 
with  snowy,  cauliflower  crowns,  and  fawn-gray,  blue-gray  bodies 
and  skirts.  Extraordinary,  stagey  rainbows,  often  doubled,  and 
the  outer  edge  of  the  iris  shading  into  rose-pink  mist.  Sea  glassy, 
reflecting  everything  in  a  softened,  satiny  fashion.  The  awe- 
some heights  of  frowning  Venezuela  (Trinidad,  beside  this  inky, 
jagged  country  looks  the  happy,  graceful  paradise  it  is).  There 
is  Patos  Island,  lying  under  the  lee  of  Venezuela ;  fertile  in  dis- 
pute as  to  customs  and  contraband;  for  it  is  under  the  British 
flag  by  a  range  of  geographical  affinities. 

"The  steamer  stops  two  miles  from  the  shore  of  the  Port  of 


THE  STORY  OF  MY  LIFE 


407 


Spain.  The  vast  harbor  is  silting  up.  The  shallow  sea  here  is 
full  of  rising  and  sinking  lavender-colored  Siphonophora,  shaped 
like  cups  with  a  bunch  of  organs  or  tentacles  at  the  top.  These 
jellyfish  look  like  wonderful  achievements  in  Venetian  glass.  .  .  . 

"On  shore.  Clean,  straight  streets  and  well-furnished  stores. 
Electric  trams.  Stand-pipes  with  supplies  of  pure  water  at  fre- 
quent intervals.  Everything  looks  very  prosperous;  the  shops 
remind  one  much  more  of  England  than  of  America.  The  Indian 
kulis  and  the  charming  costumes  of  their  handsome,  nose-jeweled 
women.  On  the  quay  there  was  a  group  of  these  Indian  women 
clad  in  pure,  undiluted  orange  robes.  Against  a  background  of 
pale  azure,  satin  sea,  and  purple-green  mountains,  it  made  a 
superb  note  of  color. 

"The  Negroes  look  much  as  they  do  in  Jamaica,  with  perhaps  a 
larger  element  of  'white'  in  their  composition,  and  a  slightly 
more  Spanish  appearance.  I  like  to  see  them  going  about  sellmg 
demure  green  and  red  parrots,  a  little  in  the  style  of  pages  carry- 
ing hawks  on  the  fist.  The  parrots  are  all  docility  till  they  have 
been  purchased ;  then  they  bite ! ! 

"Outside  the  town  there  are  spreading  trees  of  immense  size 
draped  with  the  Rhipsalis  cactus,  which  so  strangely  resembles 
the  utterly  unrelated  'Spanish  moss'  (a  pine-apple). 

"I  looked  hurriedly  into  the  Leper  Asylum.  It  is  surrounded 
by  a  tall,  pointed,  corrugated-iron  fence,  but  inside  there  is  a 
superb  park.  .  .  . 

"On  the  slopes  of  the  mountains  the  forest,  with  its  immensely 
tall,  white-stemmed  trees  and  lavish  inflorescence  of  the  lower 
growing  trees  and  shrubs — scarlet,  gray-white,  pale  mauve,  pink, 
cream-color,  magenta — reminded  me  of  the  high  woods  of  Sierra 
Leone,  in  January." 


CHAPTER  XIX 


I  RETURNED  to  England  from  South  America  at  the  end  of 
February,  1909,  in  a  brief  spell  of  premature  spring  weather,  so 
that  the  approach  to  Southampton  past  the  white  clififs  of  the  Isle 
of  Wight  and  up  the  Solent  in  a  whirl  of  gray  and  white  gulls, 
seemed  the  entry  into  a  mild  paradise.  A  few  days  later  we  were 
visited  by  a  week  of  winter,  and  all  Sussex  was  vmder  snow. 

I  spent  much  of  the  rest  of  1909,  writing  and  illustrating  my 
book  The  Negro  in  the  New  World,  which  was  published  by 
Messrs.  Methuen  in  the  early  part  of  1910. 

My  health  which  at  first  seemed  benefited  by  my  American 
journeys  deteriorated  in  1910,  and  in  the  summer  of  that  year  I 
went  to  consult  a  specialist  doctor  in  Harley  Street.  His  diag- 
nosis was  grave  in  an  indirect  manner.  To  me  he  uttered  a  few 
portentous  warnings;  but  to  my  local  doctor  in  Arundel  he  con- 
fided the  opinion  that  I  probably  had  not  much  more  than  a  year 
to  live,  as  I  was  undergoing  an  increasing  tendency  to  Bright's 
Disease.  This  opinion,  gradually  revealed  to  me,  by  its  severity 
roused  me  to  resistance. 

I  spent  the  late  summer  and  early  autumn  on  a  visit  to  my 
brother-in-law  in  the  Island  of  Anglesey,  determined  to  get  well. 
The  house  at  Lligwy  was  comfortable  but  commonplace,  but  out 
in  the  gardens  towards  the  northeast  coast,  had  been  discovered 
and  was  gradually  being  revealed  a  remarkable  series  of  old 
towns  or  settlements  one  on  top  of  the  other,  which  as  they  were 
explored  led  one  back  from  the  early  eighteenth  century,  to  the 
period  when  the  Romans  ruled  for  several  centuries  in  Anglesey, 
and  back  again  beyond  Roman  times  through  the  age  of  Druids 
to  an  origin  of  the  settlements  in  some  vague  Neolithic  period. 

I  certainly  have  seen  nothing  in  Great  Britain  so  interesting, 
interesting  not  only  to  the  specialist,  but  to  the  casual  observer. 

408 


THE  STORY  OF  MY  LIFE 


409 


The  whole  island  is  noteworthy  for  its  landscapes,  its  distant 
views  of  the  Snowdon  range,  its  own  isolated  hills,  superb  coating 
of  heather  and  golden  gorse,  its  exquisite  little  ports  and  rock 
basins.  It  also  has  a  few  fine  houses  and  dwellings  of  the  villa 
type  made  reputable  by  their  nests  of  splendid  trees,  green  lawns, 
and  semi-tropical  shrubs.  I  remember  in  one  of  our  drives  reach- 
ing the  much-embowered  portals  of  a  house  of  Italian  design  to 
pay  an  afternoon  call.  Either  I  was  not  told  the  name  of  the 
host,  or  more  likely  soon  forgot  it;  but  the  house  was  much  con- 
cerned with  the  life  of  the  excessively  ugly  Queen  Ysabel  ^  ii.  of 
Spain  in  the  middle  of  the  nineteenth  century.  I  think  the  old 
lady  who  dwelt  there  must  have  been  at  one  time  attached  to  her 
Court.  One  saw  primitive  photographs  of  Queen  Ysabel's  fam- 
ily of  children,  all  girls,  except  the  one  boy  (Alfonso  xii.)  who 
afterwards  secured  the  throne;  and  there  were  pictures  of  him  in 
various  costumes  and  uniforms,  all  of  which  made  him  look  ridic- 
ulous and  fraudulent,  and  of  the  queer  little  Bourbon  "King," 
Francisco  de  Assis,  who  w^as  their  nominal  father.  Yet  even  as 
one  turned  these  contemptuous  phrases  over  in  one's  mind,  one 
did  not  utter  them  because  the  lady  of  the  house  was  evidently  a 
champion  of  Queen  Ysabel.  Her  firm  insistence  on  that  lady's 
rights  made  one  wonder  w^hether  after  all  her  progeny  may  not 
have  been  lawfully  begotten? 

Much  of  the  winter  of  1910-11  w^as,  on  account  of  my  health, 
spent  in  warmer  countries ;  firstly  at  Monte  Carlo,  where  we 
gambled  peacefully  and  pleasantly  on  low  stakes  and  without 
loss,  and  listened  to  the  music;  and  then  on  a  more  ambitious 
tour  in  Algeria. 

The  autumn  before  I  had  directed  my  attention  to  the  remark- 
able works  of  Professor  Auguste  Pomel  on  the  palaeontology  of 
Algeria.  The  facts  stated  therein  seemed  so  wonderful  that  I 
wished  to  examine  them  by  visiting  the  great  collections  in  the 
University  of  Algiers,  and  above  all  seeing  the  actual  engravings 
on  rock  surfaces  which  depicted  a  vanished  mammalian  fauna. 

The  University  authorities  were  kind,  sympathetic,  and  oblig- 

^  Ysabel  is  the  Spanish  form  of  Elizabeth. 


410 


THE  STORY  OF  MY  LIFE 


ing,  as  were  most  French  people  before  the  War.  I  studied 
Pomel's  wonderful  collections  of  fossil  or  semi-fossilized  bones, 
and  saw  amongst  other  sights  the  course  of  the  little  river  which 
flows  through  the  remarkably  beautiful  botanical  gardens  of 
Algiers  to  the  sea  in  whose  bed  such  wonderful  fossils  have  been 
found. 

I  scanned  the  originals  and  photographs  of  the  numerous  rock 
engravings  executed  by  intelligent  human  beings,  ten,  twenty, 
thirty  thousand  years  ago,  when  Algeria  was  inhabited  by  a  mass 
of  wild  beasts  of  African,  Asian,  and  European  affinities. 

I  realized  that  some  of  the  last  examples  of  this  amazing  fauna 
had  been  extinguished  in  my  own  day,  for  I  had  known  (in 
1879-80)  an  eastern  Algeria  of  lions,  chitas,  wild  sheep,  hyenas, 
leopards,  gazelles,  addax  antelopes,  and  other  beasts,  nearly  all  of 
whom  had  now  become  extinct. 

The  fossil  remains  and  the  rock  drawings  show  that,  well 
within  the  human  period  and  the  existence  of  Homo  sapiens, 
there  have  existed  in  North  Africa  between  Morocco  and  Tripoli, 
a  remarkable  collection  of  wild  beasts,  many  of  whom  nowadays 
are  only  associated  with  Tropical  Africa.  There  were  in  Algeria 
and  Morocco,  from  the  Pliocene  down  to  some  twenty  to  thirty 
thousand  years  ago,  buffaloes  with  horns  fourteen  feet  long, 
giraffes,  a  wild  camel,  gnus,  some  form  of  zebra,  some  type  of 
eland,  elephants  of  two  or  even  three  kinds,  African  and  Asiatic, 
oryxes,  hartebeests,  saber-toothed  "tigers,"  rhinoceroses,  and  hip- 
popotami. 

When  staying  with  Roosevelt  at  Washington  in  1908,  I  met 
on  one  or  two  occasions  the  German  Ambassador,  Baron 
Speck  von  Sternburg  and  the  conversation  turned  in  a  circle, 
perhaps,  of  President  Roosevelt,  Secretary  Root,  the  Baron  and 
myself,  on  how  Anglo-German  colonial  ambitions  might  be  ad- 
justed and  the  much-dreaded  War  between  the  English  and  the 
German-speaking  worlds  might  be  avoided.  On  the  understand- 
ing that  these  conversations  were  entirely  unofficial,  not  to  be 
reported,  we  talked  with  the  utmost  freedom. 

It  was  the  period  when  the  Eastern  question  had  been  re- 


THE  STORY  OF  MY  TJFE 


411 


opened  by  the  Austrian  annexation  of  Bosnia-Herzegovina.  It 
had  seemed  to  me  that  the  step  taken  by  Austria  and  prompted 
by  Germany  was  quite  a  reasonable  one,  more  reasonable  indeed, 
in  appearance,  than  the  British  dealings  with  Egypt.  However, 
that  was  not  the  view  taken  by  Sir  Edward  Grey,  and  the  War 
of  1914  was  made  more  possible.  The  outline  I  sketched  of  the 
basis  of  a  general  agreement  between  Britain,  France,  Germany, 
Austria  and  Russia  seemed  to  Speck  von  Sternburg  ^  a  reason- 
able one.  He  communicated  the  general  effect  of  the  conversa- 
tion to  von  Kiihlmann,  the  Councillor  to  the  German  Embassy  in 
London,  who  so  frequently  filled  in  those  days  the  leading  post  at 
the  German  Embassy. 

Sometime  in  the  summer  of  1909  I  was  invited  to  dine  with 
the  German  Colonial  Society  in  London,  and  von  Kiihlmann  was 
a  fellow  guest. 

I  delivered  an  address  to  the  Society,  in  which  taking  advan- 
tage of  my  own  insignificance.  I  dealt  freely  with  the  question  of 
German  expansion,  and  was  listened  to  politely  if  not  altogether 
convincedly.  I  raised  the  question  of  Alsace-Lorraine  and 
pointed  out  that  so  long  as  this  remained  unsettled  and  these 
departments  were  not  returned  to  Erance,  France  would  always 
oppose  with  effect  all  schemes  of  German  colonial  expansion. 
But  that  if  an  accommodation  could  be  arrived  at,  satisfying 
France,  I  considered  there  would  be  no  serious  opposition  shown 
to  an  Austro-German  expansion  through  the  Balkans  over  Asia 
Minor  and  Mesopotamia.  I  had  indeed  said  much  the  same  in 
my  Daily  Graphic  articles  of  1904. 

The  speech  was  little  if  at  all  reported  in  the  English  Press, 
but  aroused  comment  in  Germany,  and  as  one  of  the  results  I  was 
asked  by  the  King  of  Wiirttemberg  to  visit  Sttittgart  and  numer- 
ous other  places  in  Germany,  and  to  deliver  a  series  of  lectures  on 
the  adjustment  of  colonial  ambitions.  The  project  to  a  great 
extent  originated  with  the  King,  but  it  was  considerably  stimu- 
lated by  a  remarkable  Wurttemberger — Theodor  Wanner — who 
had  done  much  to  found  the  Wiirttemberg  Geographical  Society. 
Herr  Wanner  was  married  to  an  English  wife,  a  connection  of 

*  Baron  Speck  von  Sternburg  died  early  in  1909. 


412 


THE  STORY  OF  MY  LIFE 


the  Rumbold  family.  He  in  early  life  had  apprenticed  himself  to 
the  firm  of  Maple  in  the  Tottenham  Court  Road,  for  the  purpose 
of  thoroughly  mastering  the  question  of  modern  furniture.  Hav- 
ing acquired  this  knowledge  and  much  else  besides — amongst 
other  things  an  intense  interest  in  palaeontology — he  proceeded  to 
turn  a  large  proportion  of  his  profits  in  Germany,  at  his  immense 
furniture  manufactories  in  Cologne  and  elsewhere,  to  the  popu- 
larizing of  research  into  the  zoology  of  the  past.  Amongst  his 
apprentices  at  Cologne  he  found  a  designer  of  skill  (Pahlen- 
berg?)  and  of  extraordinary  capacity  for  guessing  at  the  external 
forms  of  extinct  beasts,  birds,  and  reptiles.  This  man  he  intro- 
duced to  Carl  Hagenbeck  who  employed  him  to  design,  construct 
and  erect  remarkable  representations  of  Dinosaurs,  of  the 
Archaeopteryx  or  three-fingered,  long-tailed  bird,  and  of  numer- 
ous extinct  mammalian  types.  But  Herr  Wanner  was  equally 
interested  in  the  development  of  Africa  (he  had  traveled  far  up 
the  Nile  to  the  verge  of  Uganda  and  into  the  Bahr-al-Ghazal). 
He  had  been  to  South  Africa,  into  nearly  every  country  of  Eu- 
rope, and  to  the  United  States,  as  much  in  the  study  of  the 
world's  fauna,  past  and  present,  the  scope  of  modern  education, 
as  in  search  of  rare  and  useful  timber,  and  new  ideas  in  the 
designing  of  furniture. 

So  it  was  decided  that  I  should  start  for  Germany  in  October, 
1910,  and  lecture  wherever  asked  to  do  so,  chiefly  on  Colonial 
Expansion.  The  Foreign  Office  at  home  was  made  acquainted 
with  my  intentions  and  approved. 

I  arrived  first  of  all  at  Stuttgart  and  was  introduced  to  the 
King,  who  presided  at  my  first  lecture.  I  had  prepared  these  dis- 
courses with  some  care  and  illustrated  them  elaborately  with  lan- 
tern slides  and  maps.  For  all  but  the  impromptu  discourses,  I 
had  had  German  versions  prepared  (I  spoke  German  very  badly, 
but  could  read  it  fluently).  My  first  audience  at  Stuttgart,  how- 
ever, understood  English  to  a  remarkable  degree.  The  King 
made  his  opening  speech  in  our  language,  and  said  if  I  spoke  in 
my  own  tongue,  I  should  probably  be  better  understood  by  my 
audience  than  if  I  struggled  with  the  German  version. 


THE  STORY  OF  MY  LIFE 


413 


He  afterwards  entertained  me  to  supper  with  a  select  party, 
which  included  the  British  Consul  and  his  wife.  The  lecture  had 
to  be  repeated  the  next  day  to  another  audience,  and  on  this 
occasion  I  read  it  in  German. 

I  tried  to  bring  home  to  the  audience  the  remarkable  role 
played  by  little  Wiirttemberg  in  the  creation  of  British  Africa 
and  the  British  knowledge  of  Africa;  how  one  of  the  greatest  of 
African  philologists,  the  Revd.  Sigismund  Koelle,  had  been  a 
Wiirttemberg  missionary  who  entered  the  Church  of  England 
and  established  himself  at  Sierra  Leone  in  special  charge  of  the 
movement  for  emancipating  West  African  slaves;  and  how  his 
interest  in  African  speech-forms  had  led  him  to  publish  as  early 
as  1854  the  marvelous  work  Polyglotta  Africana. 

This  was  the  first  rift  in  the  darkness  that  lay  over  African 
languages. 

Koelle  in  some  six  years  of  writing  down  the  tongues  spoken 
by  slaves  from  all  parts  of  Africa,  had  revealed  the  main  features 
of  African  philology;  for  although  he  never  traveled  many  hun- 
dred miles  away  from  Sierra  Leone,  so  tremendous  was  the 
movement  of  slave  recruitment  and  enfranchisement  (stimulated 
by  the  greed  of  the  Southern  United  States  on  the  one  hand  and 
the  philanthropy  of  the  British  Government  on  the  other)  that 
Koelle  sitting  down  at  Freetown,  Sierra  Leone,  had  under  exami- 
nation natives  of  Westernmost,  Southwest,  Southeast,  East,  and 
Northeast  Africa,  from  Lake  Chad  and  the  South  Sahara,  from 
the  Zambezi  and  Angola,  from  the  utterly  unknown  Congo  Basin, 
from  the  far  interior  of  the  Cameroons,  the  basins  of  the  Benue 
and  Niger,  and  from  innermost  Guinea.  Thus  he  was  able  to 
give  us  some  clear  idea  of  the  form  and  afifinities  of  African 
speech  thirty,  forty,  fifty  years  before  the  regions  in  which  the 
speakers  lived  were  laid  bare  to  European  eyes. 

Then,  scarcely  less  in  the  effect  of  their  illuminating  work, 
came  simultaneously  the  other  Wurttembergers :  Krapf  and  Reb- 
mann,  whose  birthplaces  in  Wiirttemberg  towns  I  went  to  see,  as 
well  as  Tubingen,  their  university. 

Ludwig  Krapf  and  Johann  Rebmann  were  the  discoverers  of 


414 


THE  STORY  OF  MY  LIFE 


Mounts  Kenya  and  Kilimanjaro,  the  explorers  of  southern  Abys- 
sinia and  the  first  recorders  of  the  geography  and  ethnology  of 
the  Victoria  Nyanza,  Tanganyika  and  Nyasa  regions.  They 
wrote  about  the  Bantu  languages  of  southern  Nyasa  before  the 
lake  was  actually  discovered  and  properly  delineated  on  the  map. 

This  was  only  an  instalment  of  the  noteworthy  names  among 
Wiirttemberger  explorers  of  Africa;  but  apart  from  missionaries 
there  was  Carl  Mauch,  who  definitely  revealed  Zimbabwe. 

All  this  had  gone  to  the  building-up  of  the  British  Empire  in 
Africa,  because  nine-tenths  of  the  Wiirttembergers  were  Protes- 
tant, not  Catholic  (although  in  those  days  of  twelve  years  ago 
the  Wiirttemberg  population  was  groaning  at  the  defect  of  a  male 
heir  to  their  king,  who  was  Lutheran  in  religion.  .  .  .  The 
next  heir  was  a  Catholic  duke,  much  associated  with  Austria,  and 
unpopular  in  Stuttgart).  It  was  the  Protestant  disposition  of  the 
country  which  in  the  middle  of  the  nineteenth  century  had  drawn 
its  adventurous  young  men  and  young  women  within  the  British 
sphere  of  colonization  and  geographical  discovery. 

In  the  eighteenth  century  indeed  similar  stories  might  be  told 
of  great  American  explorations  in  which  the  second  in  command, 
the  invaluable  lieutenant,  was  a  Wiirttemberger. 

I  was  really  astonished  in  1910  and  191 1  at  the  extent  to  which 
English  was  known  and  spoken  in  Wurttemberg.  I  hardly  ever 
entered  a  village — and  what  picturesque  villages  they  were ! — 
without  finding  some  one — some  shopkeeper,  doctor,  pastor,  or 
student,  who  could  speak  English. 

Stuttgart  was  in  any  case  intensely  interesting  to  any  one  in 
search  of  knowledge,  even  more  so  perhaps  in  the  succeeding  year 
1911,  in  which  the  great  museums  had  been  finished,  and  their 
contents  fully  exposed. 

The  royal  collections  of  stufifed  birds  at  the  Natural  History 
Gallery  were  a  sight  of  sufficient  interest  and  beauty  alone  to 
justify  the  voyage.  No  amount  of  money  had  been  grudged  to 
furnish  material  for  these  collections,  which  were  in  this  and  that 
example  ahead  of  the  British  Museum.  The  birds  were  set  up 
by  the  most  intelligent  taxidermist  in  the  world — I  am  afraid  I 
have  forgotten  his  name — but  he  was  renowned  all  over  Ger- 


THE  STORY  OF  MY  LIFE 


415 


many,  and  Americans  came  from  the  great  United  States  muse- 
ums to  learn  his  methods.  When  he  had  set  up  a  bird,  he  had 
not  only  preserved  with  exquisite  care  the  colors  and  glow  of  its 
plumage,  its  wattles  and  bare  skin,  but  he  had  previously  collected 
and  applied  information  regarding  its  attitudes  and  pose. 

The  collections  of  mammals  were  similarly  remarkable,  able 
to  vie  with  those  shown  at  Berlin.  As  regards  palaeontology, 
Stuttgart  possessed  one  of  its  most  renowned  exponents.  Profes- 
sor Fraas.  This  man  was  a  great  artist  in  black  and  white  as  well 
as  a  sharp-eyed  student  of  bone  and  impress  on  the  mud-mould 
surface  now  turned  to  stone.  His  illustrations  of  the  possible  life 
forms  of  extinct  fishes,  reptiles  and  mammals,  seemed  in  their 
conjoint  effect  with  the  discoveries  of  German  palaeo-botanists 
really  to  reveal  the  world  of  long  ago.  You  could  run  in  and 
out  of  the  working  rooms  of  these  humble-minded  great  men  in 
those  days,  examine  the  material  from  which  they  theorized,  and 
criticize  and  appreciate  their  solutions. 

Wiirttemberg  certainly  interested  me  more  than  any  other  part 
of  Germany;  and  in  course  of  time,  or  previously  I  had  visited 
the  greater  part  of  that  empire,  except  East  Prussia  and  Silesia. 
Wiirttemberg  was  an  almost  Protestant  country — onl}^  a  tenth  of 
its  population  being  Roman  Catholic — thrust  southward  to  the 
Upper  Rhine  Valley  between  Catholic  Baden  and  Catholic  Ba- 
varia. It  was  evidently  the  route  through  which  Protestantism 
reached  northern  Switzerland.  Though  quite  a  small  kingdom, 
only  a  little  over  seven  thousand  five  hundred  square  miles  in 
area,  it  had  had  some  particularity  in  its  palaeontological  past.  It 
had  been  inhabited  evidently  by  Neanderthal  man,  and  both 
later  and  far  earlier  than  the  incoming  of  the  sapient  hu- 
man species;  it  had  possessed  a  marvelous  fauna  of  astonish- 
ing beasts.  Yet  there  was  a  sense  of  mystery  about  the  trivial 
name  it  bore — Wirten — or  Wiirttemberg.  As  to  this,  the  only 
explanation  I  could  get  was  that  the  hill  or  mountain  of  Wiirt  or 
Wirten,  now  not  easily  identified  but  said  to  be  "near  Stuttgart," 
was  the  seat  in  the  early  Middle  Ages  of  some  bandit-count  whose 
descendants  had  emerged  into  history  as  the  Dukes  of  Wiirttem- 
berg. 


416 


THE  STORY  OF  MY  LIFE 


The  ruler  of  this  beautiful  country  of  hills  and  forests  and 
rushing  tributaries  of  the  Rhine,  had  been  raised  to  the  royal 
dignity  by  Napoleon  i.,  and  his  family  had  furnished  a  consort 
for  a  Napoleonic  prince  whose  children — Mathilde  and  Napo- 
leon-Joseph— were  the  ultimate  heirs  of  the  Napoleonic  dynasty. 

Then,  again,  other  off-shoots  before  and  after  Napoleon's  time 
had  intermarried  with  British  royalties.  Queen  Mary  of  to-day 
was  the  daughter  of  the  Duke  of  Teck,  who  had  been  the  grand- 
son of  the  first  King  of  Wiirttemberg ;  and  Teck  Castle  or  its 
ruins  seemed  to  be  every  now  and  again  pointed  out  to  me  by 
Wurttembergers,  as  we  scudded  on  motor  drives  through  the 
woods  of  fir  and  pine. 

The  King  of  Wiirttemberg  ^  seemed  to  me  emphatically  a  gen- 
tleman. He  was  at  that  time  advanced  in  middle  age,  and  looked, 
I  thought,  very  English  in  figure,  face  and  costume.  The  English 
he  spoke  was  so  good  it  was  difficult  to  realize  he  had  not  learned 
it  in  England.  He  was  very  anti-Catholic  and  seemed  to  feel 
bitterly  the  prospect  (having  only  daughters,  who  by  the  Salic 
law  were  not  allowed  to  reign)  of  being  succeeded  by  a  Roman 
Catholic  Prince. 

Whenever  an  open  site  in  the  town  of  Stuttgart  was  at  his 
disposal,  or  came  into  his  possession,  he  promptly  arranged  for 
its  future  as  a  market,  a  stock-exchange,  or  a  museum,  for  fear, 
as  he  said,  his  successor  might  build  thereon  a  Roman  Catholic 
cathedral.  He  had,  I  think,  only  two  surviving  daughters  from 
his  first  marriage,  both  of  them  wedded  to  German  princes.  His 
second  marriage  to  a  German  princess  had  turned  out  seemingly 
an  utter  disappointment — as  to  which  many  stories  were  current, 
the  chief  of  which  was  that  the  second  queen  of  Wiirttemberg 
had  declined  to  bear  children.  They  scarcely  lived  together,  only 
appearing  side  by  side  at  very  special  ceremonies.  One  used  to 
see  the  Queen  of  Wiirttemberg  not  infrequently,  walking  the 
streets  of  Stuttgart  with  two  or  three  large  dogs  on  a  leash,  and 
dressed  very  plainly. 

A  prominent  person  at  the  Wiirttemberg  Court,  and  apparently 
iWilhelm  II. 


THE  STORY  OF  MY  LIFE 


417 


one  that  was  "friends  all  round"  was  the  Countess  (Grafin)  von 
Linden,  widow  of  the  Count  of  Linden,  who  had  been  a  note- 
worthy Minister  of  State  (curiously  enough  he  had  been  suc- 
ceeded in  1910  or  earlier  by  the  Baron  or  Count  von  Soden,  who 
as  far  back  as  the  middle  'eighties  had  been  German  Governor  of 
the  Cameroons  when  I  was  there  as  British  Vice-Consul).  The 
Countess  von  Linden  was  an  American  woman  by  birth,  and  cer- 
tainly one  of  the  persons  best  worth  visiting  in  1910  or  191 1.  She 
was  greatly  respected,  and  her  handsomely-furnished  house 
seemed  to  me  really  the  center  of  the  Court  at  Stuttgart.  She 
was  one  of  the  most  interesting  persons  I  ever  met  in  my  life,  and 
had  evidently  once  been  a  strikingly  good-looking  woman.  She 
was  large-minded  and  charitable,  spoke  English,  French  and  Ger- 
man with  equal  facility,  and  was  an  epitome  of  the  history  of 
Central  Europe,  during  the  period  between  the  close  of  the  Sec- 
ond Empire  in  France  and  the  approach  of  the  Great  War. 

To  hear  her  discourse  over  coffee  after  lunch,  or  over  after- 
noon tea,  was  to  listen  to  some  wonderful  book  of  memoirs  on 
Europeon  History.  She  was  the  reverse  of  pompous :  had  few  or 
no  illusions.  To  her  salons  came  not  only  Wiirttemberg  Grand 
Duchesses  and  Dukes,  but  the  ladies-in-waiting  on  the  Royal  per- 
sonages. There  was  one  aged  Grand  Duchess  of  delightful  wit 
and  informality,  who  smoked  cigarettes  and  told  us  bits  of  Court 
scandal.  She  was  attended  by  a  lady-in-waiting  who  always 
spoke  of  her  with  great  precision  as  "My  Ro-yal  Meestress." 
Sometimes  the  conversation  drifted  into  French  or  back  into 
German,  and  then  the  lady-in-waiting,  in  the  hope  that  I  had  not 
taken  in  the  full  purport  of  the  Duchess's  reminiscences,  would 
attempt  to  give  a  bowdlerized  version  beginning  with  the  stately 
formula  "My  Ro-yal  Meestress  says  ..." 

The  only  direction  in  which  I  was  likely  to  offend  this  Grand 
Duchess  was  in  any  criticism  of  Wagner.  There  was,  of  course, 
a  superb  opera  house  in  Stuttgart — everything  about  it  perfect, 
the  hidden  orchestra,  the  scenery  on  the  stage  (excelling  any 
scenic  effects  I  had  as  yet  beheld  in  England  or  the  United 
States)  ;  and  I  was  already  sufficiently  enamored  of  Wagner's 


418 


THE  STORY  OF  MY  LIFE 


music  not  to  need  any  stimulus  to  enthusiasm.  But  the  text,  the 
plot,  the  acting  in  these  operas  irritated  me  by  its  complete  sever- 
ance from  reality  or  probability. 

The  green  couch  prepared  for  the  wounded  Tristram,  and  his 
being  allowed,  when  laid  on  it,  to  go  on  for  half  an  hour,  singing 
in  the  most  exhausting  way,  when  his  wounds  should  have  been 
long  before  examined  and  treated,  and  complete  repose  have  been 
implicitly  commanded,  annoyed  me  by  its  absurd  unreality.  But 
I  soon  found  that  any  criticism  of  this  kind  was  so  unpalatable  to 
the  Grand  Duchess,  in  whose  box  I  was  invited  to  sit,  it  was  better 
not  uttered.  Besides,  my  admiration  of  the  scenery  and  the  music 
was  genuine. 

My  first  visit  to  Berlin  produced  rather  different  effects  on  my 
mind  from  the  thorough  friendliness  of  Wiirttemberg.  I  was 
accredited  to  another  of  the  world's  great  men  in  those  days — 
Professor  von  Luschan,  of  Austrian  extraction,  I  believe;  the 
husband  of  a  charming  and  a  learned  wife  who  had  accompanied 
and  greatly  helped  him  in  his  studies  of  Asia  Minor,  Mesopo- 
tamia, South  Africa  and  elsewhere.  The  von  Luschans  lived  in 
a  most  comfortable  flat  in  a  kind  of  Queen  Anne's  Mansions  on 
the  outskirts  of  Berlin;  but  I  saw  them  chiefly  (except  for  an 
occasional  quiet  dinner  in  their  pretty  suburb)  at  his  headquar- 
ters at  the  Berlin  Ethnographical  Museum.  Here,  at  the  Mu- 
seum, many  an  African  secret  had  been  boldly  guessed  at,  and 
the  solution  set  forth  with  a  convincing  array  of  evidence. 

Von  Luschan  took  me  with  him  to  the  Berlin  Geographical 
Society.  It  was  here,  first  of  all,  that  I  came  distinctly  in  contact 
with  the  "Prussian"  manner.  The  President,  Herr  von  Penck, 
though  a  gold  medallist  of  our  own  Geographical  Society,  a  great 
writer,  whose  works  I  had  read  and  appreciated,  was  glacial  in 
manner.  He  persisted  in  speaking  nothing  but  German,  and 
expecting  answers  in  German,  which  he  frequently  dismissed 
with  the  curt  exclamation  that  he  could  not  understand  me. 

I  also  met  with  much  military  abruptness  and  scant  courtesy 
from  the  uniformed  conductors  of  trams  (though  many  of  them 
spoke  English).    Those  were  the  only  cases  in  which  I  could 


THE  STORY  OF  MY  LIFE 


419 


record  anything  ungenial.  The  hotel  where  I  stayed  was  the  last 
word  in  comfort  and  luxury;  and  considering  the  perfection  of 
its  food,  its  orchestra  and  everything  else,  the  prices  charged  in 
those  days  were  not  excessive. 

It  had  been  suggested  to  me  by  the  King  of  Wiirttemberg  that 
the  Emperor  might  possibly  take  the  opportunity  of  my  visit,  to 
have  a  conversation  on  Africa;  but  when  I  arrived  in  Berlin  he 
was  away  on  some  East  Prussian  property,  and  the  Court  officials 
did  not  apparently  share  King  Wilhelm's  interest  in  my  journeys 
and  my  views. 

From  Berlin  I  went  to  Hamburg.  Here  I  was  in  a  great 
measure  the  guest  of  the  Wiirttemberg  Consul,  though  I  was 
lodged  at  a  superb  hotel.  I  thought  Hamburg  one  of  the  most 
beautiful  cities  I  had  seen  for  color,  for  the  shape  and  placing  of 
its  buildings,  its  lake-like  expanses  of  open  water  and  countless 
swans,  its  narrow  canals  bordered  by  many-storied  buildings. 

Its  theaters  seemed  to  me  as  good  as  those  of  London;  its 
museums  and  art  galleries  likewise.  The  Plattdeutsch  of  its 
masses  and  the  extraordinarily  good  English  of  its  educated  peo- 
ple gave  it  an  atmosphere  of  home.  Carl  Hagenbeck  was  alive  in 
those  days  (and  in  the  succeeding  year  1911).  His  wonderful  zo- 
ological gardens  at  Stellingen  were  situated  about  six  miles  away 
from  the  town,  but  it  was  easy  to  get  to  them  by  a  far-reaching 
tramway.  Then  there  was  the  great  institute  for  studying  and 
teaching  African  and  Oriental  languages  in  which  the  former 
missionary  Carl  Meinhof  played  a  noteworthy  part.  It  was 
partly  to  see  Meinhof  that  I  had  made  the  journey  to  Hamburg. 
For  the  previous  ten  years  he  had  written  very  remarkably  and 
illuminatingly  on  the  Bantu  languages.  I  wished  to  ascertain 
from  him  how  far  he  had  gone  towards  compiling  a  final  com- 
parative grammar  of  the  Bantu  and  Semi-Bantu.  If  his  range 
of  enquiry  and  collected  information  nearly  covered  the  ground, 
I  thought  I  would  abandon  my  own  attempt  to  do  this  work.  But 
I  found  his  plans  vague  and  not  likely  to  result  in  any  such  final 
effort.  His  knowledge  of  the  Bantu,  moreover,  seemed  to  be 
much  more  partial  than  mine.   It  left  out  whole  sequences  of  the 


420 


THE  STORY  OF  MY  LIFE 


languages  in  this,  that,  and  the  other  part  of  Africa  which  I  had 
had  the  kick  to  meet  with  and  to  study ;  so  that  my  visit  to  Ham- 
burg resulted  amongst  other  things  in  my  definite  acceptance  of 
the  proposals  made  from  the  Oxford  University  Press. 

My  journey  home  from  Hamburg  in  November,  1910,  was 
effected  most  cheaply,  comfortably  and  luxuriously  by  my  secur- 
ing a  passage  on  one  of  the  giant  steamers  proceeding  to  the 
United  States.  I  embarked  on  this  boat  in  the  Hamburg  Docks; 
we  had  one  night  at  sea ;  and  I  was  landed  the  next  day  at  South- 
ampton, and  an  hour  or  two  later,  at  home  in  West  Sussex. 

For  the  one  night — since  it  was  only  engaged  from  after 
Southampton — I  had  the  use  of  a  luxurious  cabin.  The  meals  on 
board  were  never-to-be-forgotten  examples  of  delicious  and  var- 
ied food,  exquisitely  cooked,  and  the  whole  cost  of  the  journey,  I 
fancy,  was  under  £2.  So  that  when  I  repeated  the  visit  to  Ger- 
many in  the  autumn  of  1911,  I  thought  I  would  proceed  from 
Liverpool  Street  and  Harwich  direct  to  Hamburg.  It  was  an 
equally  cheap  way  of  reaching  Germany,  but  one  had  gone  back 
some  sixteen  years  in  time,  and  we  traveled  on  a  small  British 
steamer  which  was  the  last  word  in  discomfort — almost  uneatable 
food,  and  poky,  stuffy  cabins. 

My  1911  visit  was  in  some  ways  less  fortunate  than  that  of  the 
previous  year.  Wanner  entertained  me  with  every  kindness  and 
unusual  comfort  at  Cologne,  but  the  Prussian  Cologne  authorities 
were  stiffly  disagreeable.  They  had  read  the  text  of  my  previous 
years'  lectures  and  the  suggestions  therein  that  Germany  should 
seek  to  base  her  extended  colonial  settlement  on  a  good  under- 
standing with  France,  that  she  should,  in  fact,  be  willing  to 
retrocede  much  of  Alsace-Lorraine  in  return  for  far-reaching 
concessions  in  Africa,  Asia  Minor  and  Mesopotamia.  Sugges- 
tions of  this  kind  which  could  be  quite  patiently  listened  to  and 
civilly  discussed  at  Stuttgart  and  Hamburg  (and  later  at  Munich) 
must  not  be  whispered,  even,  at  Berlin  and  Cologne.  The  ofificials 
therefore  at  Cologne  tendered  me  a  check  for  the  payment  of  my 
lectures,  expressed  keen  regret  that  they  could  not  be  delivered, 
clicked  their  heels,  bowed,  and  withdrew. 


THE  STORY  OF  MY  LIFE 


421 


It  seemed  an  easy  way  of  earning  £40;  at  the  same  time  it 
spatch-cocked  my  mission  (which  after  three  years'  encourage- 
ment I  had  begun  to  take  quite  seriously)  of  doing  a  little 
towards  preparing  a  general  pacification  of  conflicting  ambitions 
in  Africa  and  Asia. 

Wanner,  however,  as  a  Wiirttemberger,  was  astonished  and 
indignant.  He  telegraphed  the  facts  to  Stuttgart,  and  the  King 
at  once  asked  me  to  come  there  and  give  my  lectures  over  again, 
under  royal  patronage.  So  there  I  went.  This  time  I  had 
brought  with  me  my  traveling  servant  and  photographer,  Mr. 
Greaves,  with  a  view  to  obtaining  good  pictures  of  some  of  the 
marvels  in  the  Stuttgart  museums,  as  well  as  to  portray  the 
extraordinary  landscape  beauty  of  Wiirttemberg  and  the  wonder- 
ful villages  in  its  forested  highlands. 

Then  we  went  on  to  Bavaria.  The  museums  at  Munich  were 
as  interesting — in  a  dififerent  way — as  those  in  Stuttgart,  and 
their  officials  as  civil,  as  English-speaking,  and  as  fully  conver- 
sant with  the  life  of  former  times — the  wealth  of  the  mammalian 
fauna  in  South  Germany  down  to  about  fifteen  thousand  years 
ago. 

I  had  long  realized  what  a  varied  fate  had  been  that  of  south- 
ern Germany — the  watershed  of  the  Rhine  and  the  Danube  in 
past  ages ;  how  at  one  time  much  of  Bavaria  and  Wiirttemberg 
(and  I  suppose  of  the  Rhine  and  Danube  Valleys)  had  lain  under 
a  shallow  sea,  coming  up  from  the  Black  Sea,  Hungary  and  Aus- 
tria. Extraordinary  good  luck  had  preserved  in  the  rocks  of  this 
region  remarkable  fishes  and  reptiles,  and  later  on  amazing  birds 
and  beasts.  The  lion,  seemingly,  had  only  become  extinct  in 
southern  Germany  some  ten  thousand  years  ago,  and  when  it 
flourished  it  had  attained  to  a  size  nearly  twice  that  of  the  biggest 
lions  of  to-day. 

Similarly  huge  had  been  the  extinct  cave  bear,  the  bison  and 
aurochs,  the  woolly  rhinoceros,  and  Megaceros  stag  of  those  days 
of  the  late  palaeolithic  period. 

Apart  from  these  results  of  studying  the  vanished  faunas  of 
southern  Germany,  palaeontologists  of  Munich  had  played  a  con- 


422  THE  STORY  OF  MY  LIFE 


siderable  part  in  revealing  the  Eocene  and  Oligocene  fauna  of 
Egypt,  especially  in  the  Valley  of  the  Nile  above  Assiut. 

Here  they  had  discovered  the  teeth  and  skull  of  a  primitive 
form  of  Anthropoid  ape,  and  several  of  the  links  which  illus- 
trated the  evolution  of  the  whales  from  a  large  carnivorous, 
river-dwelling  quadruped.  The  study  of  palaeontology,  indeed, 
made  every  one  feel  friendly,  and  this  friendliness  included  mem- 
bers of  the  Royal  Family,  male  and  female,  who  were  working  in 
the  museums,  disguised  in  overalls  and  business-like  garments. 


CHAPTER  XX 


After  returning  in  February,  1911,  from  our  interesting  jour- 
ney in  Algeria  and  Southeast  Morocco,  I  was  sitting  one  evening 
looking  through  the  sketches  I  had  made,  when  all  at  once  I  was 
unable  to  see  them.  I  could  see  everything  else  in  the  room  and 
the  lamp-light,  but  if  I  turned  my  eyes  down  on  a  book  or  a  draw- 
ing, I  could  not  see  it.  When  my  servant  came  into  the  room  I 
could  only  see  half  his  face.  If  I  looked  up  at  anything  it  was 
the  same;  I  could  see  half  of  it;  if  I  looked  down  I  could  see 
nothing,  only  a  blur  of  light  or  darkness ;  and  at  last  my  surround- 
ings were  fused  in  "Catherine  wheels,"  with  zig-zag  circles  of 
gold  and  dark  blue.  In  about  half  an  hour  my  sight  gradually 
steadied  and  returned  to  normality.  I  was  very  unwell  during 
the  succeeding  week  and  had  several  returns  of  the  eye-trouble; 
after  which  I  recovered  and  set  to  work  to  finish  a  picture  for  the 
Royal  Academy. 

In  the  middle  of  April,  however,  I  was  again  taken  with  an 
attack  of  what  I  called  "glitters."  It  had  the  same  symptoms, 
first  of  all  when  looking  at  a  book  or  newspaper,  a  large  multi- 
colored star  formed  in  place  of  the  print.  Then  the  star  expanded 
to  a  kind  of  Catherine  wheel  with  a  gold  and  purple  border;  this 
was  finally  dissolved  in  a  spangle  of  glitters.  I  could  really  see 
my  way  about,  but  between  me  and  the  landscape  came  a  shower 
of  spangles  or  a  much  attenuated  circle  of  "fortifications,"  a 
zig-zag  border  of  light  and  dark  tints.  The  whole  seizure  lasted 
about  an  hour  and  then  normal  sight  returned,  but  with  a  sensa- 
tion of  very  fatigued  eyes.  It  may  be  that  the  trouble  was  an 
exaggeration  on  my  part  of  a  symptom  of  sight  disturbance  com- 
monly met  with,  and  had  nothing  specially  dangerous  about  it. 
My  wife  ascribed  it  to  liver  disorder.  Physicians  and  oculists 
have  never  provided  any  very  clear  explanation.    I  have  had  a 

423 


424 


THE  STORY  OF  MY  LIFE 


succession  of  these  attacks  ever  since  1911,  perhaps  one,  two,  or 
even  three  a  year,  or  have  gone  two  years  or  more  without  one ; 
and  no  attack  so  far  has  been  as  severe  as  those  that  overcame  me 
in  1911. 

But  all  through  1911  I  was  liable  to  periods  of  ill  health — • 
agonizing  pains  in  the  stomach,  fits  of  great  weakness;  yet  when 
circumstances  required  it,  I  found  I  could  attend  a  long  Corona- 
tion service  sitting  in  Westminster  Abbey ;  give  a  rather  exhaust- 
ing lecture;  or  make  an  extended  and  fatiguing  tour  through 
Germany.  Still,  discounting  imagination  and  exaggeration  I  felt 
that  1911  represented  to  me  a  critical  year  with  regard  to  health 
prospects.  I  became — or  fancied  I  had  become — so  weak  and 
shattered  in  May,  1911,  that  I  went  to  consult  the  same  physician 
in  Harley  Street  who  in  1910  had  pronounced  me  to  be  suffering 
from  Bright's  Disease.  To  my  surprise  and  relief  after  an  hour's 
studious  examination,  his  serious  tone  entirely  changed.  He  said : 
"You  came  to  see  me  a  year  ago,  and  I  thought  so  badly  of  your 
condition  that  I  w^arned  your  local  doctor  that  you  would  prob- 
ably not  live  out  another  year.  Now  I  find  a  positive  cure.  This 
and  that  bad  symptom"  (he  went  into  details)  "has  disappeared 
almost  without  a  trace.  If  I  thought  last  year  you  might  survive 
twelve  months,  I  think  this  year  you  may  live  to  any  degree  of  old 
age — if  you  are  careful — eighty,  perhaps,  though  you  must  not 
relax  in  the  matter  of  diet,  and  must  not  undergo  excessive 
fatigue." 

When  I  think  of  all  I  have  undergone  since  this  verdict  of 
May,  1911,  I  certainly  agree  with  this  revised  pronouncement. 

But  part  of  the  cure  he  advised  me  to  undertake  was  a  visit  to 
Vittel  in  the  east  of  France.  If  I  could  go  through  one  or  even 
two  "cures"  at  Vittel,  it  might  emphasize  my  recovery. 

So,  in  August,  1911,  we  started  for  this  place.  Vittel  is  in  the 
Department  of  the  Vosges,  though  at  some  distance  westward  of 
the  mountainous  country.  It  is  one  of  a  series  of  drinking-water 
places  such  as  Contrexeville  and  Martigny,  and  is  said  to  derive 
its  name  from  its  discoverer  and  first  beneficiary,  the  Emperor 
Vitellius.  The  town  of  Vittel  is  a  very  commonplace,  almost  ugly 


Above:    Sheep  of  the  Berbers,  Moroccan  Sahara. 

Belo-jj:  The  outer  walls  and  mud  houses  of  a  Saharan  town  (Figig). 


THE  STORY  OF  MY  LIFE 


425 


Lorraine  chef-lieu,  which  seems  actually  to  turn  its  back  on  the 
health  city  that  has  developed  during  the  last  twenty  or  thirty 
years  among  glorious  woods  and  parks,  in  the  valley  of  a  little 
river.  The  town,  a  mile  away,  makes  its  money  out  of  something 
agricultural — manures,  vegetables,  fruits  and  livestock — quite 
different  to  health  waters.  There  must  have  been  at  one  time  a 
fine  chateau  and  a  beautiful  park  which  have  become  the  nucleus 
of  the  "cure."  The  health-giving  waters  are  springs  which  gush 
from  the  rocks  on  one  side  of  the  broad  stream  valley,  as  indeed 
they  do  at  Contrexeville,  four  miles  lower  down. 

A  few  miles  to  the  eastward  are  low,  forested  hills,  called  the 
Monts  Faucilles.  It  is  just  where  the  central  plain  of  France  is 
beginning  to  rise  into  hills  and  tablelands  which  will  become  far- 
ther east  the  mountains  bordering  the  Rhine  Valley. 

We  had  deferred  our  arrival  at  Vittel  until  the  end  of  August, 
because  the  season  only  begins  at  the  end  of  May ;  and  in  the  first 
two  months,  even  in  pre- War  times,  the  cost  of  residence  was 
very  heavy.  But  the  crowds  diminished  as  August  drew  to  a 
close,  and  prices  at  the  great  hotels  dropped  considerably  for  the 
final  five  weeks  of  the  cure,  which  came  to  an  end  altogether  in 
October.  This  beautiful  park  in  which  the  health  city  was 
founded  was  said  to  be  absolutely  deserted  in  the  winter  months 
and  over-run  with  wolves.  However,  in  the  summertime  and 
early  autumn  it  was  extraordinarily  beautiful.  The  expensive 
hotels  were  palaces ;  the  pavilions  for  refreshments,  reading,  rest 
and  cure  dotted  about  the  forested  stream  valley  were  most 
attractive  to  the  eye.  There  were  superb  terraces,  flights  of  steps 
that  seemed  to  confer  honor  and  distinction  on  one  by  their  use. 
Fountains,  flower  beds  of  scenic  effect,  villas  which  seemed  built 
for  happiness,  golf  courses,  croquet  grounds,  eyots  in  the  little 
river  (the  nesting  places  of  wild  ducks  and  swans),  ornamental 
trees  from  every  country  which  could  stand  a  northern  winter; 
and  in  the  health  town  a  charming  theater,  which  had  a  succes- 
sion of  Paris  companies  and  acted  the  latest  plays  from  Paris. 
There  were  concert-halls  or  band-stands,  where  orchestras  (un- 
der Louis  Ganne,  conductor-composer  of  Monte  Carlo  in  the 


426  THE  STORY  OF  MY  LIFE 


winter)  discoursed  music  of  the  gravest  and  most  classical,  and 
of  the  gayest.  Amongst  other  amusements  which  attracted 
crowds  of  laughing  spectators  was  an  admirable  Puppet-Show  on 
the  esplanade  where  the  waters  were  drunk. 

The  doctor  to  whom  I  was  recommended  was  also  a  Johnston, 
from  a  stock  possibly  related  to  my  own;  but  he  was  further 
partly  French  or  Jewish-French,  and  called  himself  Johnston- 
Levis.^  There  were,  of  course,  several  great  French  physicians 
and  specialists  residing  in  Vittel,  of  whom  many  good  things 
were  said  by  grateful  patients.  Johnston-Levis  had  a  very  large 
clientele  of  English  and  Americans.  How  he  made  enough  to 
live  on  I  can  not  say,  because  his  fees  at  Vittel  for  the  whole  cure 
— constant  watching,  examination,  weighing,  treating — were 
absurdly  small  in  those  days — just  £2  or  £3  for  the  whole  treat- 
ment. 

Under  his  directions  one  fixed  the  quantity  of  the  kinds — 
three  or  four — of  Vittel  waters  to  be  drunk  daily,  the  number 
and  the  character  of  the  baths,  and  all  other  details  of  the  cure. 
I  can  not  say  what  the  Establishment  is  like  now,  but  in  those 
days  the  whole  cure  seemed  to  me  remarkably  cheap  and  exceed- 
ingly agreeable,  and  at  the  same  time  very  effective  in  results. 
Possibly  the  Establishment  got  its  profit  out  of  the  hotels;  but 
these  though  luxurious,  were  by  no  means  exaggeratedly  expen- 
sive. 

We  seemed  at  Vittel  to  pass  through  the  critical  period  of 
191L  Whilst  we  stayed  there  and  read  daily  all  the  telegraphic 
news  exhibited  in  long  placards  near  the  Baths,  the  question  of 
war  with  Germany  seemed  to  grow  imminent — very  imminent, 
and  then  to  pass  the  crisis,  and  to  descend  into  the  arrangement 
by  which  France  in  return  for  ceding  Congo  territory  to  Germany 
was  allowed  to  do  as  she  liked  with  regard  to  Morocco.  During 
the  week  which  preceded  the  acute  crisis  we  had  noticed  how  the 

1  Johnston-Levis  met  his  death  in  the  early  months  of  the  Great  War.  He 
had  offered  liis  services  to  the  French  Army  and  was  killed  in  an  accident  to 
his  motor.  His  wife,  a  most  charming  Frenchwoman,  towards  whom  in  our 
two  visits  we  felt  singularly  drawn,  had  predeceased  him.  Louis  Ganne, 
above  referred  to,  died  in  1923. 


THE  STORY  OF  MY  LIFE 


427 


good-looking,  stalwart  forest  guards  and  the  gendarmes  had 
disappeared  from  the  company  of  their  wives  and  children  on 
the  Sunday  promenades.  A  week  after  the  crisis  was  over,  we 
noted  with  pleasure  that  they  had  returned. 

I  did  another  Vittel  cure  in  the  late  summer  of  1912,  but  the 
average  temperature  was  about  twenty  degrees  below  the  glorious 
tropical  heat  of  1911.  We  got  rather  tired  of  the  splish-splash 
of  the  rain  in  a  very  sodden  September,  curtailed  our  stay  to 
three  weeks,  and  passed  with  rejoicing  into  Switzerland,  where 
the  sun  came  back,  bringing  with  it  a  beautiful  second  spring  on 
the  Alps  and  a  display  of  wild  flowers  hardly  inferior  to  that  of 
May.  On  this  occasion  we  had  another  driving  tour  over  Alpine 
passes  down  into  Italy,  and  up  again  to  the  new  snow  of  autumn 
Switzerland. 

In  1913  my  health  was  very  much  better.  I  omitted  to  return 
to  Vittel.  My  wife  and  I  purchased  season  tickets  on  the  Swiss 
railways  for  six  weeks.  The  expenditure  of  quite  a  small  sum  of 
money  (the  cost  has  probably  increased  by  now)  enabled  one 
to  travel  through  scenery  of  incredible  loveliness  between  the 
French,  Italian,  German  and  Austrian  frontiers,  wherever  rail- 
ways went — high  up  into  the  snow  mountains,  along  historic 
river  courses,  and  around  lakes  of  a  beauty  that  no  one  has  been 
able  to  exaggerate ;  through  forests  where  one  could  watch  the 
woodcraft  of  the  Swiss,  into  Berne,  Geneva,  Lausanne,  Lucerne, 
Zurich  and  Coire,  where  one  could  study  the  Swiss  history;  or  for 
the  extra  expenditure  of  a  few  francs,  into  Milan,  Como,  and 
Bergamo  to  study  modern  Italy.  The  Great  War  has  effaced 
many  cheap  pleasures  and  glimpses  of  a  picturesque  past. 

In  1912,  owing  to  my  improvement  in  health,  I  worked  steadily 
at  my  comparative  study  of  the  Bantu.  I  attended  the  German 
Congress  in  London.  I  had,  indeed,  been  rather  active  in  getting 
it  up,  as  it  seemed  to  connect  with  my  lectures  and  journeys 
through  Germany  and  to  open  the  way  for  an  Anglo-Franco- 
German  understanding.  But  the  outcome  of  this  series  of  meet- 
ings, paper  readings  and  discussions  in  London  was  the  reverse 
of  encouraging  for  those  few  persons  who  feared  the  approach 


428 


THE  STORY  OF  MY  LIFE 


of  a  world-shaking  War,  and  wished  to  avert  it.  Herr  von 
Kiihlmann  took  an  active  part,  but  most  of  the  German  represen- 
tatives, especially  one  or  two  Lutheran  pastors,  shocked  and 
flouted  their  English  colleagues  by  their  outspoken  and  excessive 
ambitions  in  regard  to  German  extension  of  power  and  colonial 
domain.  They  seemed  to  ignore  the  French  and  Italians  alto- 
gether, and  to  stretch  out  hands  to  the  British,  ofifering  them 
partnership  in  a  world-domination  instead  of  a  settlement  of  all 
reasonable  ambitions.  The  Congress  therefore  ended  distinctly 
coldly,  and  some  of  the  later  meetings  were  poorly  attended. 

During  1913  I  continued  my  now  strenuous  labors  at  the  solu- 
tion of  the  Bantu  problem,  having  come  to  an  understanding  with 
the  Clarendon  Press  with  regard  to  publication.  I  had  fitted  up 
my  little  two-roomed  cottage  as  a  study-studio,  a  place  where  I 
could  paint  pictures  occasionally  and  work  unfettered  at  my 
Bantu  researches;  store  and  classify  my  notes;  dictate  in  com- 
fort, undisturbed  by  the  outer  world.  Round  the  walls  of  the 
bigger  room  were  arranged  systematically  on  a  "geographical" 
system  my  now  very  large  library  of  books  and  manuscripts  deal- 
ing with  the  Bantu  and  Semi-Bantu,  and  most  of  the  other  great 
speech-groups  of  Africa.  I  had  all  through  these  years — 1908  to 
the  end  of  1917 — an  invaluable  shorthand-secretary.  Miss  Avis, 
who  at  the  close  of  1917  passed  into  Government  employ,  in 
which  she  remained,  and  in  which  I  hope  she  is  sufificiently  appre- 
ciated. But  for  her  help,  her  quickness  of  hearing  in  dictation, 
and  nice  appreciation  of  sounds  (so  that  she  scarcely  ever  made  a 
mistake  in  taking  down  and  typing  Bantu  syllables)  I  do  not 
think  I  could  ever  have  passed  in  review  the  enormous  mass  of 
material  I  had  been  collecting  or  writing  since  1882  and  which 
gradually  came  to  illustrate  some  460  types  of  Bantu  and  Semi- 
Bantu  tongues  and  dialects. 

In  the  autumn  of  1913,  after  leaving  Switzerland  I  revisited 
Alsace-Lorraine,  stayed  in  Strasburg  and  in  Metz,  more  than 
ever  convinced  that  a  great  struggle  was  about  to  ensue  between 
France  and  Germany.  I  wanted  to  realize  to  what  extent  the 
longing  for  return  to  France  still  existed  in  the  ceded  depart- 


THE  STORY  OF  MY  LIFE 


429 


ments.  I  found  this  feeling  very  evident  and  came  to  the  con- 
clusion that  French  was  more  spoken,  more  often  heard  in  the 
streets  than  in  my  early  experiences  of  1878. 

We  carried  out  the  final  extensions  and  adaptation  of  our 
house  at  Poling  between  December,  1913,  and  the  opening 
months  of  1915.  The  additions  to  the  old  Priory  were  carefully 
designed  by  my  brother  Philip,  every  effort  being  made  to  reveal 
and  strengthen  the  original  structure  of  the  thirteenth  and  six- 
teenth centuries.  His  design  was  so  adroit  and  his  materials  so 
carefully  selected,  that  a  few  years  afterwards  it  was  difficult 
for  strangers  to  tell  the  new  building  from  the  old. 

In  June,  1914,  I  was  visited  by  two  American  professors,  who 
were  endeavoring  to  arrange  for  lectures  on  the  British  Empire 
to  be  delivered  at  the  Western  Reserve  University  of  Cleveland, 
a  magnificent  city  which  is  the  ostensible,  though  not  the  adminis- 
trative, capital  of  the  great  State  of  Ohio.  I  accepted  their 
proposition  in  general,  which  as  far  as  I  remember  was  a  fee  of 
£200  for  a  week  or  ten  days'  lecturing  at  Cleveland.  My 
thoughts,  however,  were  rather  distracted  by  the  ominous  hush 
which  had  fallen  on  Europe,  after  the  assassination  of  the  Aus- 
trian Heir- Apparent.  On  May  14,  1914,  my  wife  and  I  had 
received  an  invitation  from  the  Foreign  Office  to  attend  a  very 
remarkable  dinner  to  be  given  at  the  House  of  Commons  to  the 
delegates  assembling  from  all  parts  of  the  world  at  a  great  Con- 
gress convened  in  London.  Sir  Edward  Grey  was  to  preside,  but 
his  place  was  taken  at  the  last  moment  by  some  other  notability 
of  the  Foreign  Office,  more  accustomed  to  speaking  French  or 
less  nervous  about  it.  All  the  ambassadors  were  to  be  there,  and 
the  general  tenor  was  to  celebrate  an  Agreement  concluded  on 
African  questions  between  the  great  powers  of  the  world. 

It  was  certainly  a  sumptuous  feast,  magnificently  carried  out. 
The  speeches  were  interesting,  and  perhaps  the  pleasantest  part 
of  the  whole  evening  was  the  assemblage  after  dessert  of  all  the 
guests  on  the  river-side  terrace,  where  we  were  joined  by  many 
members  of  the  House  of  Commons.  Herr  von  Kiihlmann 
seemed  transported  with  delight.    On  the  terrace  he  went  from 


430 


THE  STORY  OF  MY  LIFE 


table  to  table  of  coffee  and  liqueur  drinkers,  smokers  of  cigars 
and  cigarettes,  congratulating  the  guests,  some  of  them  a  little 
stolid  and  surprised  and  inadequate  of  speech.  It  was — he  said 
to  us,  when  he  reached  the  place  where  we  were  sitting — one  of 
the  great  occasions  of  the  world's  history — a  complete  settlement 
of  all  the  conflicting  ambitions  of  the  great  powers,  that  might, 
had  they  not  been  settled,  have  resulted  in  a  world-wasting  War. 
To  me,  it  seemed,  when  reduced  to  cynical  truth,  a  slaking  of  Ger- 
man ambitions  in  Africa  by  a  division  between  Germany  and 
Britain  of  the  Portuguese  Colonies,  though  it  was  also  whispered 
that  a  settlement  regarding  Mesopotamia  and  Asia  Minor,  Persia, 
and  the  Levant  had  been  reached  between  Germany  and  Russia; 
that  Austria  had  come  to  terms  with  Italy  regarding  Tripoli  and 
the  Balkans;  and  that  France,  content  with  the  retirement  of 
Germany  from  meddling  with  Morocco,  was  willing  to  drop  the 
question  of  Alsace-Lorraine  which  had  looked  very  ugly  six 
months  before. 

At  any  rate  we  enjoyed  the  dinner  and  the  music,  the  spectacle 
and  the  setting  of  it;  and  these  pleasant  impressions  of  a  settle- 
ment remained  intact,  until  the  news  of  June  twenty-eighth. 

On  the  middle  day  of  the  Goodwood  Races  in  the  last  week  of 
July,  all  the  military  or  naval  officers  attending  them  were  some- 
what sensationally  called  away  by  telegrams  to  active  service. 
On  August  fifth,  when  War  had  been  declared,  I  tendered  my 
services  to  the  Foreign  and  Colonial  Offices,  offering  to  proceed 
to  any  part  of  Africa,  where  I  could  be  useful.  No  answer  came, 
so  after  a  day  or  two  I  decided  to  carry  out  the  project  on  the 
prescribed  date  of  a  visit  to  the  United  States,  and  deliver  my 
lectures. 

In  early  September,  however,  when  I  was  in  London,  prepar- 
ing to  start  for  Liverpool,  I  was  summoned  to  the  Foreign  Office, 
to  answer  enquiries  about  the  American  journey.  I  told  the  offi- 
cials there  that  I  was  prepared  to  sacrifice  the  whole  scheme  if 
the  Imperial  Government  preferred  to  make  use  of  me,  especially 
in  Africa;  but  after  a  little  consideration  it  was  decided  that  I 


THE  STORY  OF  MY  LIFE 


431 


might  be  more  useful  if  I  went  to  the  United  States,  extended 
and  re-shaped  my  lecturing  course  to  bear  more  directly  on  the 
problems  touched  by  the  War,  and  if  I  included  some  of  the 
Canadian  cities  in  my  tour. 

So  I  started  for  Liverpool  and  New  York  on  September  six- 
teenth, having  had  several  disappointments  through  the  abroga- 
tion of  steamers  announced  to  start,  but  afterwards  withheld.  I 
took  with  me  as  before  Mr.  Arthur  Greaves  to  manage  the  travel 
arrangements  and  the  transport  of  the  slides.  Our  journey  was 
not  uncomfortable  though  we  felt  occasional  tremors  over  real 
or  rumored  submarines. 

There  was  an  interesting  woman  passenger  on  board  the 
steamer,  Mrs.  Zelia  Nuttall;  who,  apparently  English  in  origin, 
had  been  married  to  an  American,  and  had  taken  up  her  residence 
in  Mexico  many  years  before.  She  had  been  bequeathed  by  her 
husband,  an  old  Spanish  house  near  Mexico  City,  surrounded  by 
a  sumptuous  garden,  but  had  been  excluded  from  tenanting  this 
by  the  long  succession  of  Mexican  revolutions.  She  had  a  thor- 
ough knowledge  of  Spanish,  and  before  the  disorders  had  arisen 
in  this  unhappy  country,  had  discovered  or  obtained  access  to 
remarkable  documents  concerning  Drake,  which  she  desired  to 
translate  and  send  to  the  Royal  Geographical  Society,  and,  I  be- 
lieve, did  so,  a  year  or  two  later.  What  happened  to  her  eventu- 
ally I  do  not  know,  but  during  the  eight  days  of  our  voyage  she 
taught  me  more  about  Mexico  than  any  one  else  had  done. 

Arrived  at  New  York,  we  hurried  away.  Greaves  and  I,  to 
Cleveland.  Here  we  were  lodged  at  a  most  comfortable  Univer- 
sity Club,  where  delicious  meals  were  served,  and  everything 
was  very  sanitary  and  very  comfortable.  The  lectures  were,  I 
believe,  fully  appreciated,  but  the  work  during  the  ten  days  ex- 
hausted me ;  for  in  addition  to  the  one  official  lecture  in  the  after- 
noon, I  found  myself  drawn  into  giving  unofficial  discourses  in 
the  morning  and  evening.  But  at  Cleveland.  I  met  some  of  the 
most  wide-awake,  far-sighted,  specialized  Americans  I  had  en- 
countered— palseontologists,  who  in  conjunction  with  Osborn 
were  revealing  the  marvelous  past  of  North  America,  from  the 


432 


THE  STORY  OF  MY  LIFE 


Secondary  ages  down  to  the  Inter-  and  Post-glacial  periods ;  bot- 
anists; anthropologists;  and  ornithologists  who  by  a  conjunction 
of  unlimited  money  and  unlimited  health  and  endurance  had  been 
enabled  to  collect  and  transport  to  the  United  States  alive  the 
most  beautiful,  remarkable,  rare  or  eccentric  birds  in  the  world. 
These  lived  out  their  lives  in  gardens  and  glass  houses,  warmed  if 
need  be  to  tropic  heat.  They  were  fed  at  no  matter  what  cost  on 
the  appropriate  food  and  by  invitation  could  be  seen  within  easy 
distance  of  Cleveland. 

In  one  of  these  private  zoological  gardens,  hidden  in  a  vast 
and  beautiful  park,  which  sloped  down  to  the  wooded  borders  of 
Lake  Erie,  I  passed  all  the  time  I  could  spare  from  other  classes 
and  occupations.  I  would  sit  with  its  owner  in  one  of  his  many 
hothouses  reproducing  the  average  temperature  of  the  Moluccas, 
while  beautiful  Moluccan  birds  flew  from  bush  to  bush  over  our 
heads  or  settled  confidently  on  my  host's  shoulders,  leaning  over 
to  take  from  him  a  meal-worm,  a  date,  or  a  peppercorn.  Or  we 
would  pass  into  a  partly  sheltered  enclosure,  and  a  mass  of 
flamingoes  would  rise,  a  little  disturbed  by  our  entry;  or  feed 
cranes,  rheas,  or  bustards  out  in  the  open. 

One  day  we  zig-zagged  over  partly  finished  roads,  crossing 
the  great  uplands  of  central  Ohio,  till  we  reached  the  iron-work- 
ing district  of  Akron.  Here  I  was  to  visit  a  millionaire,  Mr. 
Barber (?).  I  believe  he  was  the  head  and  forefront  of  Bryant 
and  May's  matches.  He  was  a  courtly,  handsome  old  gentleman 
of  Virginian  family,  a  widower,  willing  to  re-marry.  When  in 
England,  studying  the  afifairs  of  Bryant  and  May,  he  had  fallen 
in  love  with  Stowe  House  in  Buckinghamshire,  and  afterwards 
settling  down  at  Barberton  in  Ohio,  had  ordered  the  erection 
there  of  a  house  as  nearly  as  possible  resembling  Stowe. 

The  rough  ground  of  hill  and  vale  and  woodland,  stream  and 
little  lake  had  been  beautifully  shaped  by  his  directions,  to  imitate 
the  scenery  of  some  great  English  park.  He  had  put  English  wild 
duck  on  the  lake,  and  had  imported  a  Buckinghamshire  lad  to 
serve  as  duck-boy.  His  super-butler,  footman,  coachman,  and 
maidservants,  had  all  been  imported  from  Buckinghamshire. 


THE  STORY  OF  MY  LIFE 


433 


When  I  drove  up  to  the  palatial  steps  and  magnificent  entrance 
of  his  house,  the  kindly  super-butler  from  Buckinghamshire  met 
my  tired  little  form  on  the  bottom  step,  took  my  hand-bag,  and 
directed  the  transference  of  my  luggage.  My  host  greeted  me  on 
the  top  step,  opined  that  I  should  be  glad  of  a  rest  before  dinner, 
and  issued  directions  for  my  bestowal.  I  passed  along  what 
might  have  been  the  picture-hung  corridors  of  an  English  man- 
sion, and  was  shown  into  a  suite  of  rooms — a  bedroom,  with 
every  possible  convenience  and  luxury,  including  a  little  library 
of  books,  a  bathroom  with  about  eight  different  means  of  having 
a  bath,  and  a  charming  sitting-room,  looking  out  over  an  English 
garden.  Here,  on  a  little  table  near  a  cedar  fire  in  the  sitting- 
room,  tea  was  laid  for  me,  and  soon  arrived.  I  realized  I  was  to 
be  left  here  undisturbed  till  dinner-time,  and  thanked  my  host 
perhaps  more  fervently  for  this  rest  from  speech,  than  for  any 
other  blessing.  When  I  had  had  my  tea,  I  stepped  out  from  my 
bedroom  into  the  little  garden  under  its  windows.  A  sunny 
autumn  still  lingered  in  these  altitudes. 

The  week-end  visit  went  ofif  happily,  and,  what  I  felt  indebted 
for,  quietly.  There  was  so  much  to  see  and  wonder  at  in  the 
house,  so  many  rare  books  to  glance  at  in  the  library,  such  won- 
derful meals  to  be  eaten,  without  remark,  without  pressure  or 
invitation,  or  to  abstain  from  without  excuse,  if  one  were  not 
hungry;  there  were  interesting  conversations  to  listen  to.  It  was 
the  sort  of  place  where  you  could  retire  to  your  own  suite  of 
rooms  without  explanation  or  excuse;  so  it  was  a  paradise  to  a 
tired-out  man. 

Amongst  the  interesting  things  to  be  seen  were  the  piggeries 
with  wonderful  new  breeds  of  pigs,  a  pigeonry  superintended  by 
an  educated  white  woman,  with  an  approximate  population  of 
thirty  thousand  pigeons ;  poultry  yards,  with  almost  every  known 
breed  of  domestic  poultry;  duck  ponds  in  the  wild  parts  of  the  es- 
tate, where  the  wild  duck  were  looked  after  by  the  Buckingham- 
shire boy ;  a  swan  pool,  with  the  Mute  swan  and  the  North  Amer- 
ican wild  swan  with  a  black  beak ;  flocks  of  Chinese  geese  and  the 
European  wild  goose.   The  only  thing  in  these  collections  which 


434 


THE  STORY  OF  MY  LIFE 


attracted  my  greed  was  a  wonderful  domestic  pigeon,  entirely 
yellow  in  plumage.  Not,  of  course,  a  saffron  or  canary  yellow ; 
nature  had  halted  at  this.  But  mainly  of  the  color  known  in  old 
catalogues  of  artists'  pigments  as  "Naples  yellow."  Some  exam- 
ples, however,  I  thought  were  almost  hesitating  to  assume  a  tint 
of  chrome.  Being  especially  fond  of  pigeons,  and  in  a  very  mod- 
est way  a  breeder  of  black  and  white  fantails  at  home,  I  coveted 
exceedingly  the  possibility  of  adding  to  my  blacks  and  whites, 
yellow  examples  which  might  once  more  have  carried  out  my 
favorite  combination  of  colors;  black,  white  and  yellow.  But  I 
hesitated  over  the  bad  manners  which  would  have  been  evidenced 
by  pressing  this  request  on  my  host.  He  died  a  year  ago — I 
gathered — and  no  doubt  his  pigeon-breeding  enterprise  has  been 
broken  up. 

From  the  State  of  Ohio  I  was  borne  by  a  swift  railway  to 
Buffalo  (where  the  people  were  very  German  and  pro-German, 
but  quite  pleasant  nevertheless  to  a  Britisher.  ...  I  noticed  at 
the  railway  station  how  prominent  was  the  German  language, 
almost  more  in  evidence  than  English) ;  and  from  Buffalo  across 
the  frontier  to  Toronto. 

Here  I  was  lodged  in  a  very  comfortable,  residential  club,  the 
guest  of  the  University,  and  here — and  hence — I  gave  such  a 
number  of  lectures  and  discourses  to  students  and  to  the  gener- 
ality, including  log-cutters  out  in  the  wilds,  and  Cabinet  Min- 
isters, that  I  got  quite  dazed. 

Then  I  went  on  to  Ontario,  where  I  tasted  winter  for  the  first 
time  in  that  year.  A  kindly  and  modern-minded  Canadian  took 
me  about  in  a  motor  or  a  motor-sleigh,  clad  in  about  three  fur 
coats  through  a  temperature  of  0°  Fahrenheit  to  call  on  the  Duke 
of  Connaught,  and  afterwards  to  see  great  woods  under  the  first 
heavy  falls  of  snow.  I  stayed  at  an  exceedingly  luxurious  and 
architecturally  beautiful  hotel  with  a  French  name — Chateau 
Laurier.  I  visited  the  Dominion  Parliament  building,  which 
afterwards  met  with  a  great  disaster  in  1916,  a  fire  that  destroyed 
everything  save  the  wonderfully  organized  library  and  the  Senate 
House.   I  went  with  eagerness  to  see  the  great  museum  of  Nat- 


THE  STORY  OF  MY  LIFE 


435 


ural  History,  which  was  then  being  directed  by  a  clever  professor 
from  Manchester  or  Liverpool.  He  or  one  of  his  colleagues  had 
taken  part  with  United  States  professors  in  a  series  of  palaeonto- 
logical  explorations  in  the  middle  of  North  America,  on  either 
side  of  the  Canadian  frontier;  and  there  were  the  staggering 
results  of  these  discoveries  to  be  surveyed.  Apparently  they 
ranged  from  the  later  Secondary  Epoch  down  to  the  Pliocene, 
and  my  attention  was  arrested  by  the  discovery  of  quite  a  number 
of  forms  of  bovid  related  to  the  Musk  Ox  and  the  Takin  of  Tibet. 
The  young  professor  who  inducted  me  into  these  discoveries  un- 
happily died  in  1922.  He  taught  much  to  me,  I  remember,  on  the 
subject  of  the  bitter  opposition  still  prevailing  (mainly  in  French- 
speaking  Canada)  against  palaeontological  research.  He  men- 
tioned by  name  certain  Senators  or  public  men — French  Cana- 
dians— who  though  they  would  juggle  with  stocks  and  shares  and 
plunge  into  enterprises  of  dubious  honesty,  would  nevertheless 
fight  for  the  retention  in  elementary  education  of  the  Six  Days  of 
Creation,  the  limitation  of  the  Earth's  age  to  some  reckoning  of 
five  thousand  years,  and  the  attribution  of  all  undoubted  relics  of 
vanished  reptilian  and  mammalian  types,  to  the  effects  of  the 
Flood.  The  Canadian  Cardinal  and  one  or  two  highly  placed 
Catholic  clerics  were  instanced  by  this  professor  as  bitter  enemies 
of  scientific  research. 

I  listened  with  some  amazement,  and  pointed  out  that  I  had 
heard  little  or  nothing  in  the  United  States  of  Roman  Catholic 
obstruction  to  any  form  of  science,  which  might  disturb  pre- 
conceived views  regarding  the  interpretation  of  Genesis.  "Yes," 
he  said,  "you  are  quite  right,  these  priests  and  cardinals  are 
American,  though  they  may  be  of  Irish  and  German  stock ;  but 
they  do  not  seek  to  penalize  Research  or  to  bolster  up  Orthodoxy 
by  defending  Genesis.  But  I  assure  you  that  with  these  French 
Catholics  in  Canada,  it  is  very  difficult  and  altogether  preposter- 
ous, even  'un-christian.'  If  they  could  have  their  way  in  the 
legislature  and  elsewhere,  they  would  conduct  all  education  on 
early  eighteenth  century  lines." 

This  association  of  rabid  religion  with  shady  speculation  in 


436 


THE  STORY  OF  MY  LIFE 


railways  and  mines,  gave  me  a  great  prejudice  against  Quebec 
notabilities  and  their  doings. 

I  went,  however,  to  Montreal,  and  derived  a  pleasant  impres- 
sion from  that  town  of  both  English  and  French  Canada.  Then 
I  returned  to  New  York  (what  a  comfortable  and  interesting 
railway  journey!),  and  found  New  York  also  beginning  to  look 
like  winter.  There  I  embarked  for  Liverpool,  on  an  avowedly 
American  steamer — United  States  as  regards  flag  and  rating, 
but  managed  by  British  officers.  We  were  told  that  owing  to 
War  conditions,  it  was  only  Second  and  Third  Class,  but  it  was 
very  comfortable,  and  the  food  was  as  good  as  though  we  had 
been  First  Class  passengers.  The  steaming  rate  was  slower,  and 
the  voyage  must  have  lasted  nearly  ten  days.  All  went  well  until 
v^e  were  off  the  south  coast  of  Ireland.  In  the  day-time  we 
seemed  to  be  steaming  as  near  to  the  green  and  mountainous 
shores  as  was  safe,  and  the  "feeling  of  safeness"  was  enhanced 
by  frequent  meetings  with  British  ships  of  war  which  exchanged 
signals  with  us. 

But  at  half-past  nine  at  night,  when  we  must  have  been  some- 
where off  Waterford,  a  sudden  jar  shook  the  steamer,  and  caused 
her  to  heel  over  at  a  dangerous  angle.  At  the  time  I  was  reclining 
on  a  sofa  in  the  library,  reading  a  book.  This  was  on  the  topmost 
deck,  a  favorite  place  of  resort.  Two  bridge  parties  were  seated 
at  card-tables.  Then  came  this  sudden  jar.  I  rolled  over  on  to 
the  carpeted  floor,  the  bridge  parties  were  dissolved  into  strug- 
gling heaps  of  men  and  women.  Books  shot  out  of  the  shelves; 
but  just  as  we  seemed  to  be  going  over,  the  ship  righted  itself. 
The  cabin  door  was  soon  pulled  open,  and  into  the  disordered 
library  were  brought  several  wounded  passengers,  who  had  been 
flung  against  the  railings  in  the  gangway.  Then  there  resounded 
the  voice  of  an  officer  ordering  all  passengers  to  proceed  at  once 
to  their  cabins.  We  did  so,  meekly  obedient.  Into  my  cabin, 
came  a  steward  who  wrought  certain  arrangements  which 
brought  armature  over  the  port-holes  and  made  the  cabin 
stiflingly  hot  and  airless.  Nevertheless  he  shut — and  I  feared — ■ 
locked  my  cabin  door;  and  therein  I  sweltered  for  some  ten 


THE  STORY  OF  MY  LIFE 


437 


hours.  Then  the  door  was  unlocked,  and  I  was  bidden,  if 
dressed,  to  present  myself  before  the  officers  in  the  saloon. 

All  the  passengers  went  through  some  sort  of  an  examination 
as  to  name,  address,  nationality,  etc.  Where  this  questioning 
aroused  no  suspicion,  they  were  given  a  landing  ticket.  We  were 
requested  before  landing  to  put  no  questions  to  any  member  of 
the  crew  regarding  the  shock  the  steamer  had  experienced  the 
night  before,  so  I  can  not  supply  any  further  information  of  this 
untoward  incident.  I  know  I  was  only  too  thankful  to  be  landed 
at  Liverpool  with  my  baggage  on  a  quiet  Sunday  morning,  and  to 
find  a  special  train  obligingly  waiting  to  convey  us  and  other  Lon- 
don passengers  to  our  destination.  To  our  further  relief  we 
found  ourselves  arriving  in  time  to  catch  the  last  train  down  to 
Arundel,  so  that  I  reached  my  home  at  Poling  that  Sunday  night. 

This  journey  brought  me  to  the  verge  of  1915.  Greaves  felt 
bound  to  enlist,  "to  go  into  the  fighting  before  he  was  fetched." 
He  accordingly  joined  the  Army  in  January  or  February,  1915, 
and  six  months  afterwards  he  was  in  the  trenches.  He  went 
through  the  "ghastly  time"  that  was  inflicted  on  most  people 
fighting  in  France  in  those  days,  if  they  survived.  He  got  injured 
or  wounded  eventually,  so  that  one  of  his  legs  ceased  to  work,  and 
in  1917,  he  was  sent  home  to  a  Chichester  hospital.  He  contin- 
ued a  cripple  until  1920,  and  then  recovered.  Since  that  period  he 
has  lived  happily  at  Arundel  as  a  Town  Councillor  and  an  agent 
for  the  Prudential  Insurance  Company. 

A  former  servant  of  mine  in  Tunis,  and  a  companion  on  two 
long  African  journeys — Wallis  Vale — who  had  become  in  1903 
an  official  of  the  Society  for  the  Prevention  of  Cruelty  to  Ani- 
mals, also  fought  through  the  War  from  1915  to  1919,  got 
wounded  in  1918,  but  recovered. 


CHAPTER  XXI 


After  my  return  from  America,  at  the  close  of  1914, 1  worked 
at  home  with  what  patience  I  could  muster  at  my  book  which  was 
beginning  to  shape  itself  as  two  volumes  on  the  Bantu  and  Semi- 
Bantu  languages.  This  work  was  threatening  material  enlarge- 
ment by  the  realization  that  I  must  deal  not  only  with  the  Bantu 
languages — which  under  my  survey  and  searchings  were  growing 
in  number  from  fifty  to  sixty  to  a  total  of  two  hundred  and 
twenty-six  principal  forms  (with  another  hundred  dialects  or 
marked  varieties) — but  also  with  the  Semi-Bantu.  When  I  first 
began  this  work  of  research  and  collected  material  for  it  in 
Africa,  I  had  realized  the  vocabularies  and  opinions  of  Koelle,  the 
forecasts  of  Bleek,  but  had  been  unwilling  to  use  the  term  "Semi- 
Bantu,"  or  to  admit  the  close  relationship  between  this  West 
African  group  and  the  Bantu  languages  of  Central  and  South 
Africa.  But  in  May  or  June,  1915,  I  had  a  letter  from  an  old 
(and  remarkable)  acquaintance,  Professor  Auguste  Chevalier, 
which  caused  me  to  change  my  views. 

Chevalier  was  a  French  Colonial  official  of  quite  remarkable 
botanical  knowledge,  who  had  also  studied  the  peoples  and  lan- 
guages of  French  Africa.  He  had  written  a  noteworthy  book 
about  twenty  years  ago  on  the  Nigerian  Sudan.  He  had  jour- 
neyed over  the  greater  part  of  French  West  Africa.  I  had  met 
him  first  at  the  French  Colonial  Office  in  Paris  in  1905,  where 
he  had  taken  the  part  of  a  specialist  in  discussing  Liberian  ques- 
tions. We  had  rapidly  made  friends,  and  I  found  that  he  knew 
Paris  as  intimately  and  discerningly  as  he  knew  West  Africa. 
The  purpose  of  his  letter  in  1915  was  that  a  considerable  army 
was  being  recruited  for  France  amongst  the  regular  Negro  sol- 
diery of  French  West  Africa.  In  this  army  there  were  men 
coming  from  French  and  Portuguese  Guinea,  from  the  border- 

438 


THE  STORY  OF  MY  LIFE 


439 


lands  of  Sierra  Leone  and  Dahome,  perhaps  also  from  French 
Equatorial  Africa,  who  spoke  Semi-Bantu  languages  of  great 
interest ;  one  or  two  of  them  perhaps  unknown  down  to  the  pres- 
ent day,  others  recognizable  as  languages  imperfectly  portrayed 
by  Koelle.  If  I  wished  to  make  my  survey  as  full  as  possible,  he 
thought  I  should  take  this  unique  opportunity  of  studying  these 
languages.  He  had  therefore  proposed  to  the  French  Minister  of 
War  that  I  be  invited  to  join  a  small  committee  of  French 
officials,  authorized  to  visit  the  camps  of  the  Senegalese  soldiers, 
and  study  them  ethnologically.  I  was  suggested  as  the  person 
who  should  examine  their  languages. 

I  referred  the  matter  to  Lord  Bertie  (Ambassador  in  Paris). 
He  approved,  and  added  that  as  there  were  some  other  matters 
in  which  I  could  give  him  possibly  useful  information,  I  could 
make  my  headquarters  at  the  British  Embassy  and  from  there 
proceed  to  visit  the  various  places  in  the  south  and  east,  where 
the  Senegalese  were  stationed. 

So  at  the  end  of  the  summer  in  1915,  with  full  facilities 
afforded  me  by  Mons.  Messimy  (Minister  of  War),  I  went  to 
France.  After  a  halt  at  Paris,  I  established  myself  next  at  Men- 
tone,  near  which  place  a  large  number  of  Senegalese  were  in 
barracks  or  hospital. 

Here  I  met  Chevalier  and  his  colleagues,  men  of  extraordinary 
interest  to  me,  administrators  and  doctors  who  had  lived  for 
years  in  portions  of  West  Africa  scarcely  yet  delineated  on  the 
map. 

Everything  had  been  so  well  arranged  by  them  in  such  a  sys- 
tematical way,  that  no  time,  scarcely  an  hour,  was  lost.  Chevalier 
had  noted  down  by  name  and  number  the  soldiers — chiefly 
wounded  men,  who  were  recovering — who  could  inform  me  on 
this  or  that.  Most  of  these  Senegalese  talked  and  understood 
enough  French  for  me  to  question  them  without  an  interpreter, 
but  in  cases  where  they  had  not  this  knowledge,  the  interpreter 
was  ready. 

It  certainly  was  one  of  the  sensations  of  my  life,  an  actually 


440 


THE  STORY  OF  MY  LIFE 


fulfilled  dream  of  the  improbable.  Several  languages  recorded 
by  Koelle  between  1848  and  1854  were  heard  and  realized,  and 
found  to  be  a  true  story  after  all.  And  thus,  between  Mentone, 
Frejus  and  Lyon,  I  re- wrote  vocabularies  not  transcribed  since 
Koelle's  day,  and  acquired  knowledge  of  a  Semi-Bantu  speech 
from  the  Upper  Gambia  never  written  down  before. 

A  month  probably  covered  all  this  work,  but  it  might  have 
occupied  three  months  or  half  a  year  but  for  Chevalier's  previous 
rounding-up  and  good  management.  The  work  had  to  be  rather 
rapidly  concluded  because  six  or  seven  thousand  of  the  Senegal- 
ese suffered  so  much  from  the  mistral  wind  that  they  had  to  be 
shipped  over  to  Algeria  to  recover. 

The  last  part  of  this  intensely  interesting  time  was  spent  at  my 
old  friend  Vicars's  Consulate  at  Lyon,  which  he  vacated  soon 
afterwards  to  become  Consul-General  at  Marseilles.  His  house  at 
Lyon  seemed  like  my  discovery  or  re-discovery  of  imperfectly 
recorded  Semi-Bantu  languages :  an  incident  in  a  dream.  The 
house,  with  its  hanging  gardens,  and  screening  woods,  was  appar- 
ently situated  in  the  middle  of  the  great  city,  high  up  above  the 
rushing  Saone.  Yet  it  was  a  short  motor  drive  from  these  quiet 
and  beautiful  heights  into  the  busy  city,  just  beginning  to  recover 
from  the  serious  fright  of  a  German  occupation.  Thence  I 
returned  to  Paris  and  my  quarters  at  the  Embassy. 

Lady  Bertie  was  the  daughter  of  the  Lord  Cowley,  who  had 
been  British  Ambassador  in  Paris  down  to  the  end  of  June,  1867, 
and  she  had,  I  understood,  as  a  girl  of  about  sixteen,  been  present 
at,  or  been  allowed  to  see,  the  great  ball  given  to  Napoleon  iii. 
and  Eugenie,  the  Prince  of  Wales  and  the  Duke  of  Edinburgh; 
when  the  Prince  of  Wales  came  over  to  visit  the  Paris  Exhibi- 
tion. From  what  I  saw  and  what  she  told  me  (my  own  remem- 
brances of  the  Embassy  went  back  to  1895)  I  was  able  to  depict 
the  scenes  described  in  my  novel  The  Veneerings. 

I  traveled  back  to  London  as  a  Foreign  Office  messenger,  via 
Havre.  As  I  carried  two  bags  of  despatches  I  was  accorded  the 
deck  cabin  on  the  little  steamer  which  was  to  make  the  passage, 
escorted  by  a  gunboat.   Very  much  to  my  dislike  and  apparently 


Above 
Bc/o'zc. 


Looking  towards  the  High  Atlas  from  the  Moroccan  Sahara. 
The  barley  fields  of  Figig,  Moroccan  Sahara. 


THE  STORY  OF  MY  LIFE 


441 


on  account  of  the  despatches,  I  was  locked  into  the  cabin,  to 
ensure  their  or  my  safety;  which  would  not  have  conduced  to  it 
if  the  steamer  had  been  torpedoed.  But  we  rounded  Spithead 
safely  and  I  was  congratulating  myself  on  a  very  pleasant  cross- 
ing, when  a  thick  white  fog  descended.  The  steamer  did  not 
reach  Southampton  till  the  early  afternoon. 

During  what  remained  of  1915  and  throughout  the  succeeding 
year  and  three-quarters  of  1917,  I  worked  almost  unremittingly 
at  my  Bantu  languages,  paying  an  occasional  visit  to  Oxford,  to 
watch  their  halting  progress  through  the  Press,  halting  because 
nearly  all  the  Clarendon  establishment  was  away  at  the  War. 
Fortunately  for  me,  one  of  the  Press  officials  most  concerned  with 
my  Bantu  study  was  wounded  or  ill  and  came  back,  so  we  did  a 
great  deal  of  work  together  in  October,  1917. 

At  this  time  the  first  volume  was  practically  finished  by  me, 
and  the  proofs  were  corrected  during  1918.  The  second  volume 
was  also  shaped,  and  the  researches  necessary  to  its  conclusion 
were  finished.  But  the  Clarendon  Press  began  to  fear  it  could  not 
be  published.  The  War  seemed  no  nearer  a  successful  conclusion 
in  1917,  and  the  publication  of  the  first  volume  would  probably 
entail  on  the  Oxford  University  Press  a  considerable  financial 
loss. 

At  the  same  time — the  end  of  1917 — my  faithful  typist-secre- 
tary since  1908,  Miss  Florence  Avis,  had  to  arrive  at  a  decision 
leading  to  our  separation.  She  finished  typing  the  second  vol- 
ume of  the  Bantu  Comparative  Study,  and  then  accepted  a  Gov- 
ernment appointment  which  she  has  held  ever  since.  I,  for  my 
part,  was  anxious  to  get  back  to  France,  and  watch  the  War,  as 
nearly  as  possible  at  headquarters.  The  Young  Men's  Christian 
Association,  in  conjunction  with  the  War  Office,  was  recruiting 
a  body  of  lecturers  to  interest,  amuse  and  possibly  instruct  the 
young  men  of  our  Army  at  the  Front.  They  invited  me  to  join 
the  band.  I  willingly  accepted,  and  at  the  close  of  January,  1918. 
found  myself  at  the  Y.  M.  C.  A.  headquarters  in  Boulogne. 

There  landed  with  me  a  very  interesting  man  who  died  a  few 
months  ago :  Arthur  Diosy,  of  Hungarian  origin,  and  the  son  of 


442 


THE  STORY  OF  MY  LIFE 


a  Hungarian  patriot  who  after  the  struggle  of  1848  had  become  a 
Minister;  but  when  the  Austrians  re-conquered  Hungary  with 
the  aid  of  Russia,  he  had  to  fly  for  his  Hfe.  His  son,  Arthur,  was 
possibly  born  in  England.  His  principal  education  at  any  rate 
was  obtained  there  and  in  France.  He  spoke  French  absolutely 
like  a  Frenchman,  and  English  that  was  absolutely  English, 
except  for  his  velar  r,  a  constant  feature  in  Central  European 
pronunciation. 

Arthur  Diosy  had  pursued  a  career  in  Japan,  and  had  returned 
to  live  in  England  with  an  English  wife  on  the  modest  proceeds 
of  his  service  there.  He  developed  almost  naturally  into  a  lec- 
turer, one  of  the  most  informed  and  entertaining  I  have  ever 
listened  to.  It  would  be  difficult  to  find  a  more  agreeable  travel- 
ing companion.  He  and  I  afterwards  found  ourselves  associated 
in  lecturing  under  the  War  Office  in  1919,  in  the  occupied  Rhine- 
land.  On  this  occasion  in  January-April,  1918,  we  faced  together 
the  excessive  disagreeables  of  Boulogne,  so  excessive,  indeed,  that 
I  still  shudder  at  their  remembrance. 

Those  which  arose  over  the  War  cloud  overhanging  the  city — 
the  bombs,  the  shells,  the  panics  and  the  darkness — one  could  not 
complain  of ;  the  dirt,  the  squalor,  the  rudeness  of  the  French 
railway  officials,  one  might  perhaps  have  resented  more  legiti- 
mately, especially  as  they  seemed  to  me  to  have  been  rather  char- 
acteristic of  Boulogne,  both  before  and  after  the  War.  It  is,  at 
any  rate,  one  of  the  few  French  towns  I  have  consistently  dis- 
liked for  the  last  forty  years.  It  has  scarcely  any  feature  of  true 
picturesqueness,  and  it  has  exhibited  all  that  was  worst  in  the 
mismanagement  of  the  old  South  Eastern  Railway. 

We  were  thankful  not  to  be  detained  more  than  two  nights  in 
our  miserable  lodging  on  first  arrival  in  January,  though  the 
misery  of  it  was  an  unavoidable  consequence  of  War  conditions. 
We  next  halted  at  a  scene  sixty  miles  away :  Abbeville.  This 
town,  which  a  few  months  later  was  to  be  shattered  by  German 
air  bombardments,  was  then  virtually  unspoiled.  Its  beautiful 
cathedral  was  a  delight  to  the  eye;  its  public  gardens  and  their 
fountains,  its  winding  streets  with  their  age-old  houses  were 
uninjured.    And  although  the  principal  inn  was  a  little  antique, 


THE  STORY  OF  MY  LIFE 


443 


it  was  perfectly  clean,  and  served  one  with  astonishingly  good 
food  for  the  worst  year  of  the  War.  At  Abbeville  we  received 
our  instructions. 

Diosy  was  ordered  off  in  the  Ypres  direction ;  I  was  destined 
for  the  Fifth  Army,  the  most  southern  in  its  extension  of  "front" 
among  the  sections  of  the  British  Force.  A  Y.  M.  C.  A.  motor 
with  a  very  competent  driver  started  off  with  me  one  morning, 
first  to  Amiens  and  then  onward  to  Peronne.  The  journey  to 
Amiens  I  thought  delightful,  for  the  finq  weather  of  the  preceding 
January  still  held. 

The  winter  landscapes  of  the  Somme  Valley  seemed  strangely 
beautiful  under  the  clear  sunshine  and  were  further  brightened 
by  enormous  numbers  of  magpies.  One  saw  them  in  groups  of 
five  and  six,  two  and  three,  or  in  flocks  that  could  not  be  counted. 
Their  bold  black-and-white  plumage  harmonized  remarkably  with 
the  gray-green,  yellow-green  tree  stems,  the  brown  blur  of  leafless 
twigs,  the  mauve-blue  distances  of  hillsides,  the  intense  blue  hol- 
lows of  stream  courses,  the  pale  azure  of  the  winding  Somme, 
and  the  patches  of  intense  grass-green  of  some  belated  crop  which 
had  survived  the  winter. 

It  was  strange  to  me,  on  the  following  day,  to  realize  the  differ- 
ence occasioned  by  a  sudden  change  of  weather;  for  after  we  left 
Amiens  at  mid-day  on  the  morrow  of  our  arrival,  the  weather, 
the  temperature  suddenly  changed;  brown-gray  clouds  filled  the 
firmament,  a  terrific  easterly  wind  blew  them  forward,  and  a 
snowfall  descended,  almost  I  should  think,  characteristic  of  Si- 
beria. In  the  space  of  two  or  three  hours  the  roads  became  filled, 
their  direction  almost  obliterated  with  snow,  and  we  reached 
Peronne  under  circumstances  nearly  tragic.  It  was  a  town  of 
ruins  almost  ironically  veiled  by  snow.  Yet  this  violent  change 
of  weather  found  the  British  soldier  singularly  unperturbed.  Our 
car  reached  some  point  at  the  entry  to  the  town  where  papers  and 
passports  had  to  be  scrutinized  and  (though  the  order  was  seldom 
obeyed)  gas  masks  donned.  I  pointed  this  out  to  my  driver,  who 
had  one  but  who  scoffed  at  the  idea  of  putting  it  on.  I  did  not 
obtain  a  mask  until  a  few  days  later. 

We  passed  on  up  a  High  street  with  deplorable  ruins  on  either 


444 


THE  STORY  OF  MY  LIFE 


side,  ruined  churches,  ruined  theaters,  ruined  town  halls,  auc- 
tion-rooms, repositories  and  shops.  The  only  consoling  element 
was  the  always  cheerful-looking,  red-cheeked,  helmeted  British 
soldier.  Only  small  bodies  of  men  returning  from  service  in  the 
trenches  wore  gas-masks. 

The  car  entered  a  dismal  lane  of  high  ruins  and  stopped.  More 
confabulation  of  a  kindly  character  and  I  was  invited  to  enter  a 
dark  yard,  and  pass  along  a  dark  passage  into  a  house  half- 
ruined.  There  was  a  cheerful  sound  of  voices  within  and  I 
entered  a  ramshackle  hall  rather  blocked  by  tables  and  chairs,  and 
saw  five  or  six  persons  seated,  eating  cold  beef  and  ham  and  good 
white  bread,  and  drinking  tea.  One  of  these  was  a  Y.  M.  C.  A. 
agent  who  played  the  part,  more  or  less,  of  host.  He  apparently 
expected  me  and  so  showed  me  quickly  to  my  quarters  up  very 
rickety  stairs  whose  constitution  had  been  undermined  in  a  bom- 
bardment. However  they  were  warranted  safe.  Up  them  I 
reached  the  bedroom  allotted  to  me.  It  was  a  tiny  space,  sepa- 
rated from  a  much  larger  room  on  one  side  by  a  flimsy  partition, 
and  on  the  other  looking  out  towards  the  northeast  and  the  Ger- 
man lines,  already  becoming  fearful  yet  weirdly  beautiful  in 
aspect  by  the  usual  evening  bombardment.  What,  however,  struck 
me  with  more  dismay  at  the  time  was  the  incoming  of  the  north- 
eastern wind  and  snow  through  this  side,  which  must  have  been 
struck  by  some  projectile  and  had  most  of  its  brickwork  knocked 
out.  Its  place  had  been  supplied  by  strands  of  American  cloth, 
shiny-black  on  the  inside. 

However,  this  was  not  the  time  to  criticize  or  grumble,  and  I 
was  thankful  for  the  few  feet  of  privacy,  and  the  fact  that  there 
was  some  kind  of  a  bed  to  sleep  on,  and  a  very  inadequate  wash- 
ing apparatus. 

I  stayed  some  ten  days  on  this  first  visit  to  Peronne  and  grew 
gradually  almost  to  like  it.  I  was  taken  out — sometimes  far 
away — on  motors  to  lecture  to  tired  and  resting  troops.  At  all 
these  places  there  were  magic  lanterns  available,  and  I  had 
brought  with  me  three  or  four  hundred  slides.  I  just  talked 
about  anything  likely  to  amuse  the  men  and  distract  their 


THE  STORY  OF  MY  LIFE 


445 


thoughts.  I  found,  on  the  whole,  my  experiences  in  Africa,  my 
researches  into  its  natural  history,  its  strange  beasts  and  birds, 
more  acceptable  than  anything  else.  I  do  not  think  I  once  deliv- 
ered any  one  of  the  typed  or  printed  lectures  I  had  deposited  with 
the  authorities.  One  felt  too  over-excited  to  fix  one's  eyes  on  a 
sheet  of  paper  and  read;  and  any  discourse  with  too  much  for- 
mality wearied  the  men.  It  was  best  to  distract  their  thoughts 
from  the  War  by  giving  picture  after  picture  on  the  screen,  and 
trying  to  be — if  one  could — humorous  in  one's  descriptions. 

Sometimes  shells  burst  outside,  close  to  the  half-ruined,  tar- 
paulined lecture  hall  and  drowned  the  sound  of  one's  voice;  while 
one's  heart  stood  still  at  an  occasional  shriek  of  pain  or  yell  of 
surprise.  My  audience  always  seemed  to  me  strangely  calm. 
When  I  had  been  about  a  week  in  these  quarters  at  Peronne,  the 
Germans  apparently  renewed  their  bombardment,  or  their  shells 
fell  more  often  in  the  quarter  where  I  was  lodged. 

There  came  or  drifted  into  the  house — I  think  he  was  a  sharp- 
shooter, recovering  from  a  wound  which  still  caused  him  to  limp 
— a  type  of  man  I  never  have  had  fully  explained,  but  who 
aroused  in  me  a  particular  interest  because  I  seemed  to  have  met 
him  or  his  type  at  different  stages  during  the  War — quite  pos- 
sibly the  same  individual  throughout.  At  a  lecture,  or  rather  an 
easy-going  discourse  delivered  by  firelight  to  a  group  of  timber- 
cutters  near  Lake  Huron  in  October,  1914,  my  attention  was 
attracted  to  a  man  who  seemed  to  be  the  leader  of  the  camp — 
tall,  strong,  well-mannered,  good-looking,  whom  I  guessed  to  be 
an  Ulster  Irishman.  This  same  man  or  his  twin  brother  turned 
up  in  Peronne  in  February,  1918,  and  in  some  way  or  for  some 
reason,  was  told  off  to  the  Lecturers'  house,  possibly  to  replace 
the  other  military  guardian  who  had  rejoined  his  regiment. 

In  conjunction  with  the  Y.  M.  C.  A.  representative,  he  took  on 
himself  a  much  more  active  role  in  regard  to  providing  for  our 
safety.  He  led  us  down  first  of  all,  into  the  principal  cellar  which 
was  reached  by  winding  steps.  Peronne  seemed  to  have  been  built 
in  ledges.  There  was  a  street  below  our  first  floor,  which  floor 
projected  in  an  asphalted  terrace  outside  the  room  in  which  we 


446 


THE  STORY  OF  MY  LIFE 


ate  and  read.  The  cellar  extended  below  this  to  a  considerable 
depth  and  had  on  one  side  a  dark  opening  said  to  have  been  made 
by  the  Germans.  You  passed  through  this  opening  down  a  wind- 
ing descent  of  rough  steps  cut  in  the  rock,  to  a  lower  cellar  full  of 
empty  or  broken  wine  bottles  and  vestiges  of  beds  of  herbage  left 
by  the  German  soldier  occupants,  who  had  abandoned  the  town 
in  1917.  Our  Ulster-Irish-Canadian  sharpshooter,  in  spite  of 
having  a  wounded  leg  not  quite  healed,  scrambled  down  these 
rocky  steps  with  an  electric  lamp,  and  exhibited  the  hewn-out 
space  below  the  official  cellar.  More  than  this,  his  keen  ear  de- 
tected faint  sounds  of  movement  and  footsteps  in  the  street  and 
he  declared  that  there  had  been  an  opening  in  the  rocky  wall  and 
an  exit  into  the  street  below  the  house.  We  got  down  pick-axes 
and  other  implements,  and  under  his  direction  dug  a  short  tunnel 
which  let  in  daylight  and  afforded  a  discreet  exit  to  the  occupants 
of  this  lowest  cellar.  The  sharpshooter  advised  us  not  to  push 
our  investigation  too  far  in  case  we  exhibited  to  passers-by  in  the 
street  (from  which  we  were  only  separated  by  rusty  shattered 
iron  railings)  this  retreat  from  shell-fire.  Here  and  in  the  cellar 
immediately  above  we  had  found  a  safe  retreat;  for  if  the  house 
was  shattered  above  us,  we  had  here  a  protected  exit  into  day- 
light and  the  open  air. 

I  had  another  stay  at  Peronne  later  on  in  March,  only  a  few 
days  before  the  German  break-through  on  March  twenty- first, 
after  which  the  town  was  re-occupied  by  them  for  some  months; 
and  I  several  times  spent  a  night  sleeping  soundly  in  these  sub- 
terranean retreats. 

But  my  lecturing  took  me  in  the  interval  to  the  banks  of  the 
Oise  River,  along  which  a  good  proportion  of  the  Fifth  Army 
was  stationed.  On  my  second  visit  I  was  picked  up  by  a  General, 
whose  name  I  have  forgotten — if  I  ever  knew  it — at  a  pretty  little 
place  called,  I  think,  Sinceny.  He  was  to  take  me  on  in  his  motor 
to  Chauny.  On  our  way  thither  we  had  to  pause  for  half  an 
hour  to  permit  of  a  shell-burst  in  the  road  being  mended;  and  we 
gazed  across  a  little  stream  at  the  ruined  and  abandoned  town  of 
Tergnier,  at  whose  railway  station  I  had  so  often  paused  for 


THE  STORY  OF  MY  LIFE 


447 


refreshments,  going  to  or  from  Switzerland.  The  General  here 
was  very  anxious  to  indicate  to  me  the  German  lines,  distant  pos- 
sibly not  more  than  a  mile.  I  was  not  at  all  anxious  to  sec  them 
outside  the  car,  because  there  were  vague  alarms  of  gas,  and  my 
gas  mask  seemed  impossible  of  correct  adjustment,  so  that  I  felt 
half-stifled,  wholly  shut  off  from  sound,  and  with  my  vision  much 
obscured.  However,  at  last  the  hole  in  the  road  was  sufficiently 
mended  for  the  car  to  pass  across  it  with  the  aid  of  planking.  As 
we  hurried  ahead  over  the  roughened  road,  the  masked  General 
pointed  to  the  fleeing  road-menders,  who  were  apparently  run- 
ning before  some  alarm  of  gas.  We  crossed  the  Oise  and  entered 
Chauny,  coming  for  the  moment  into  a  scene  of  comparative 
peace.  Beautiful  trees  screened  the  town  and  had  not  seemingly 
been  under  shell-fire.  The  General's  car  drew  up  in  front  of  an 
ugly  but  respectable  building  which  had  been  some  kind  of  eccle- 
siastical establishment — a  monastery — a  college,  but  which  had 
been  fitted  up  as  a  hospital  by  both  the  Germans  and  ourselves. 
The  surgeon  came  out  to  see  us  and  spoke  of  a  gas  attack  having 
just  occurred,  apparently  on  the  road  over  which  we  had  passed. 

Here  were  cases  of  men  staggering  in  to  be  treated.  Some 
while  before  our  arrival  I  had  preferred  the  possible  chance  of 
being  gassed  to  the  certainty  of  being  suffocated  by  my  mask,  so 
I  appeared  with  an  ordinary  head  and  shoulders  without  this 
disguisement  and  instinctively  went  to  help  the  surgeon  undress 
and  relieve  the  gas  cases,  four  in  number.  As  I  stooped  over 
their  bodies,  I  smelled  the  nasty  fumes  of  mustard  gas.  The  sur- 
geon ordered  me  to  desist,  but  not  before  I  had  been  "gassed"  to 
some  extent.  The  General,  realizing  this,  took  me  in  his  car  to 
the  camp  where  he  commanded  about  a  mile  to  the  north  on  a 
cleared  space  inside  a  really  beautiful  wood  or  forest.  All  sorts 
of  things  were  given  to  me  to  drink  and  inhale,  and  I  recovered 
entirely  from  the  sense  of  stupor  that  v^as  stealing  over  me. 

I  even  attempted  to  eat  some  kind  of  a  dinner  at  the  evening 
meal,  served  in  a  large  summer  house  (apparently)  on  the  edge 
of  a  wood  in  which  the  ground  was  covered  with  blooming  snow- 
drops.  As  we  sat  down  to  dinner,  the  lights  suddenly  went  out, 


448 


THE  STORY  OF  MY  LIFE 


and  while  we  remained  silent  in  profound  darkness,  we  heard 
the  crashes  of  the  shells  which  were  to  blow  up  a  good  deal  of 
Chauny.  It  seemed  an  extraordinary  conjunction  of  strange 
dreams  rather  than  realities.  I  could  not  eat,  as  I  felt  too  sick, 
but  I  tried  to  talk  in  an  ordinary  way  with  the  neighbor  on  my 
right.  He  turned  out  to  be  a  certain  Major  Hanbury — a  nephew 
of  the  owner  of  the  wonderful  villa  of  La  Mortola  on  the  Franco- 
Italian  Frontier,  where  I  had  visited  the  unique  collection  of 
cacti  in  1915.  I  told  him  of  my  crime  of  having  picked  ofif  or 
picked  up  pieces  to  transplant  in  my  home  collection,  and  asked 
him  to  intercede  with  his  aunt  for  my  forgiveness.  Vicariously 
he  forgave  me,  in  between  the  bangs  and  spells  of  darkness,  and 
actually  (I  am  glad  to  think)  survived  the  German  attack  just 
about  to  take  place,  and  the  War  generally. 

Then,  when  the  meal  was  over,  and  the  German  bombardment 
left  off  for  a  little  while,  I  tottered  to  the  very  comfortable  quar- 
ters assigned  me  for  the  night,  to  find  a  soldier  servant  in  waiting, 
told  off  to  look  after  me.  His  face  so  reminded  me  of  Sussex, 
that  I  said,  when  he  was  unlacing  my  boots,  "You  must  be  a 
Sussex  man."  He  replied,"!  am,  sir;  I  come  from  near  Worth- 
ing."  His  home  was  a  village  only  eight  miles  from  Poling. 

The  next  day,  however,  I  was  too  ill  to  do  any  more  lecturing, 
and  the  General,  amid  all  his  distractions,  told  off  a  car  to  convey 
me  to  the  town  of  Ham,  where  I  had  been  several  times  before. 
The  surgeon  at  the  military  hospital  there  was  just  about  to  enter 
me  as  a  patient  and  have  me  put  to  bed,  when  strange  news 
reached  him.  He  altered  his  plans;  gave  me  some  treatment 
which  afforded  temporary  relief  and  packed  me  into  a  small  Ford 
car  driven  by  an  old  friend  of  mine  in  the  service  of  the  Y.  M. 
C.  A.  (a  man  soon  afterwards  decorated  for  his  bravery  and  the 
efficiency  of  his  car  service).  I  felt  too  stupid  and  with  my  mind 
too  much  inclined  to  wander  to  ask  for  any  explanations ;  I  only 
gathered  that  the  car  if  possible  was  to  take  me  a  hundred  miles 
back  to  Abbeville. 

Here  I  was  landed  that  same  day  and  put  into  the  military 
hospital  a  mile  outside  the  town,  on  a  breezy  down.   My  temper- 


THI-:  STORY  OF  MY  LIFE 


449 


ature  when  tested  seemed  to  cause  the  doctors  some  anxiety  as  it 
was  decidedly  below  normal. 

I  found  myself  being  deftly  undressed  by  a  male  attendant  and 
put  into  one  of  the  sick  beds  of  a  hospital  ward,  the  others  being 
occupied  by  one  other  lecturer  and  four  officers,  most  of  whom, 
hke  myself,  were  suffering  from  gas  attacks. 

The  first  day  and  night  in  hospital  seemed  like  part  of  a  bad 
dream,  with  purges  which  acted  like  emetics,  and  emetics  which 
behaved  like  purges;  and  many  other  disagreeable  things  conse- 
quent on  the  efforts  to  get  the  gas  poison  out  of  my  system. 

Very  soon,  however,  I  was  feeling  brighter  and  better.  My 
appetite  was  coming  back  to  be  met  and  welcomed  by  really 
delicious  hospital  fare.  The  great  surgeon  and  two  lesser  assist- 
ants had  some  knowledge  of  my  work  in  Africa.  The  supreme 
matron  of  the  hospital,  a  personage  of  awe-inspiring  rating,  rank- 
ing, I  think,  with  a  General,  had  a  most  impressive  uniform  and 
the  smile  of  an  archangel,  inclining  one  at  once  to  reverence. 

My  gas  symptoms  gave  way  to  an  attack  of  bronchitis  in  which 
I  felt  every  now  and  then  near  to  stifling.  The  east  wind  of  the 
past  six  weeks  still  blew,  and  my  bed  was  next  to  a  window,  per- 
petually open  at  the  top.  I  thought  at  last  that  either  the  window 
must  be  shut  or  I  should  expire,  so  I  tottered  out  of  bed  one  night 
and  with  infinite  labor  unfastened  the  cord  and  closed  the  win- 
dow. Almost  immediately  a  chorus  of  thanks  went  up  from  the 
other  five  beds,  the  sufferers  averring  that  I  had  probably  saved 
their  lives,  if  only  I  could  "stick  it"  when  the  Matron  came  on 
her  round  of  inspection. 

I  slept  a  sound  sleep  and  awoke  rather  late  for  the  morning 
toilet  and  the  delicious  breakfast  which  followed.  Suddenly  I 
was  aware  that  the  Matron  with  her  suite  was  in  the  ward.  She 
smiled  at  me  like  the  kind  mother  she  was,  probably,  in  other 
phases  of  life.  Then  her  face  stiffened  and  she  asked  in  icy 
tones,  "Who — has — closed — that — window?"  Summoning  up 
my  courage,  I  replied,  "I  have,  because  of  my  bronchitis."  Her 
eye  fell  on  me.  It  softened,  and  she  said,  "Oh,  well ;  if  it  is  bron- 
chitis, I  forgive  you."    So  the  window  remained  closed  till  the 


450 


THE  STORY  OF  MY  LIFE 


wind  shifted  and  a  vote  of  the  ward  was  passed  unanimously  for 
its  re-opening.  The  later  days  of  my  stay  here  (except  for  the 
unhappiness  of  reaHzing  the  German  advance)  were  rendered 
pleasant  by  a  recovery  which  permitted  my  dressing  and  walking 
about  through  the  paths  of  this  great  field  hospital,  the  open 
spaces  of  which  were  rendered  touchingly  beautiful  by  the  plant- 
ing of  flowers  now  out  in  blossom.  There  were  departments 
which  attended  to  Indian  soldiers  and  African  helpers.  I  even 
did  a  little  Bantu  word  collection  among  the  South  African  road- 
workers  ! 

Then  I  began  to  feel  restless,  and  the  surgeons  detected  certain 
tendencies  which  required  medical  examination  and  treatment  of 
a  more  deliberate  kind.  They  thought  I  was  well  enough  to  pro- 
ceed home  to  England ;  moreover  they  spoke  apprehensively  on 
the  need  for  closing  down  this  field  hospital  because  of  increasing 
bombardment  from  German  aeroplanes.  A  few  weeks  later  in 
May  this  was  done,  because  Abbeville  town  was  half  wrecked  by 
the  discharge  of  bombs. 

So  one  beautiful  April  morning  I  was  put  into  a  car  which 
motored  me  sixty  miles — or  thereabout — into  Boulogne ;  for  the 
railway  at  either  side  of  Abbeville  station  had  been  smashed  up. 
I  had  to  spend  two  nights  at  the  Boulogne  hotel  through  a  terrific 
air  bombardment  which  was  said  to  have  killed  a  hundred  persons 
at  the  French  military  headquarters  of  the  town.  Then  I  made 
the  passage  to  Folkstone  through  a  wonderful  lane  of  shipping, 
escorted  to  my  home  in  Sussex  by  a  nurse  who,  in  one  of  those 
coincidences  occurring  so  often  in  War-time  that  it  is  annoying 
to  mention  them,  turned  out  to  be  a  young  lady  and  an  old  friend, 
whose  parents  lived  within  a  mile  of  my  home  near  Arundel. 

Afterwards  followed  some  uneasy  months  at  home  with  a 
growing  health  trouble,  which  seemed  to  have  been  started  by  the 
mustard  gas.  My  attention  was  diverted  from  the  problem  of 
how  to  get  cured  of  this  by  the  violent  illness  which  attacked  our 
neighbor.  Sir  Hubert  Parry,  an  old  and  a  dear  friend,  and  one  of 
the  most  interesting  men  I  ever  met.  whose  expositions  of  this 


THE  STORY  OF  MY  LIFE 


451 


and  that  point  in  music  used  to  interest  me  greatly.  He  had 
apparently  injured  himself  internally  by  some  fall  in  bicycling. 
Although  about  seventy  years  of  age,  he  still  looked  so  young 
that  it  never  seemed  incongruous  to  see  him  flying  about  on  a 
bicycle  through  the  Sussex  lanes,  when  he  was  not  motoring  at 
twice  the  regulation  speed  along  the  main  roads.  He  was 
attacked  by  hernia  and  before  any  remedies  could  be  devised,  he 
was  apparently  too  far  gone  for  an  operation,  and  so  died. 

Partly  to  assuage  my  grief,  partly  to  distract  my  thoughts  from 
my  own  health  troubles,  which  I  was  always  inclined  to  exagger- 
ate, I  went  down  to  Easton  Glebe  to  stay  with  H.  G.  Wells. 

My  remembrances  of  Wells  dated  far  back  to  the  early  'nine- 
ties, when  I  used  to  hear  of  him  through  W.  T.  Stead  and  Harry 
Cust.  He  had  been  contributing  some  clever  articles  about  an 
"uncle,"  dinner-table  decorations  and  menus,  to  the  Pall  Mall 
Gasette;  and  then  gave  to  an  astonished  world  the  brilliant  story 
of  The  Time  Machine. 

My  much  younger  brother  Alex,  bolder  than  I,  had  written  to 
Wells  some  time  before  the  War,  to  comment  on  one  of  his 
stories,  and  to  his  surprise  had  been  asked  down  to  visit  him  in 
Essex.  This  had  paved  the  way  for  our  acquaintance ;  but  I  met 
him  first  at  an  extraordinary  meeting  conducted  by  Sir  Ray 
Lankester  and  others  in  May,  1915.  Ray  Lankester  had  become 
astounded  at  the  mistakes  made  in  high  quarters  over  the  conduct 
of  the  War,  and  was  instrumental  in  calling  together  a  great 
concourse  of  people,  more  or  less  connected  with  Science,  at  the 
rooms  of  some  scientific  society  at  Burlington  House. 

Wells  was  amongst  the  invited,  and  I  was  fortunately  early  in 
the  number  of  those  who  were  invited  to  speak;  fortunately, 
because  the  concourse  was  enormous,  about  three  times  the  num- 
ber estimated.  The  atmosphere  on  a  very  warm  day  in  May 
became  unbreathable.  Men  fainted  and  were  carried  out.  Wells 
and  I  almost  gravitated  without  introduction,  shook  hands  and 
staggered  out  to  some  neighboring  club,  where  after  washing  and 
gasping  and  hair-brushing,  he  offered  me  a  restorative  cup  of  tea. 

Soon  afterwards  I  went  down  to  stay  at  Easton  Glebe  and 


452 


THE  STORY  OF  MY  LIFE 


visited  him  every  now  and  again  to  record  my  War  experiences 
or  to  listen  to  his  when  on  the  ItaHan  Front.  In  between  my 
medical  consultations  I  paid  him  a  visit  at  Easton  in  September, 
1918.  We  talked  about  the  War,  about  Hubert  Parry,  and  this, 
that,  and  the  other  thing,  whilst  the  other  week-end  guests  were 
there.  They  were  all  to  leave  on  the  Monday  morning.  Wells 
said :  "You  can  stay  on  till  to-morrow,  so  that  we  can  have  a  quiet 
talk;  and  in  the  afternoon  I  will  take  you  to  see  Lady  Warwick's 
garden." 

As,  after  lunch,  we  crossed  from  his  Glebe  into  her  grounds 
and  strolled  along  balustraded  terraces  to  the  pools  and  willows 
of  the  wild  duck  haunts  below,  he  said  to  me,  a  propos  of  nothing 
in  particular,  "Why  have  you  never  written  a  novel  ?  Every  man 
who  has  been  out  in  the  world  and  seen  the  world  ought  to  write 
at  least  one  novel."  I  gasped,  with  the  remembrance  of  how 
many  times  since  1915  I  had  felt  impelled  to  speak  to  Wells  on 
this  subject,  and  how  each  time  I  had  been  restrained  by  a  very 
proper  reluctance  to  disturb  another  writing  man  over  my 
troubles  with  publishers.  "Let  us  sit  down,"  I  said,  "and  I  will 
tell  you." 

We  found  an  imitation  time-worn  seat  picturesquely  placed  by 
the  duck-haunted  water.  "I  wrote,"  I  said,  when  he  was  ready 
to  listen,  "my  first  story  about  an  African  explorer  when  I  was 
fourteen.  I  think  it  was  largely  influenced  by  the  work  of  Win- 
wood  Reade.  Long  afterwards,  I  tried  to  charm  away  lonely 
hours  in  the  Cameroons  or  Old  Calabar  by  sketching  out  and 
writing  down  ideas  of  novels.  One  of  these,  The  History  of  a 
Slave,  I  carried  through  to  completion  and  prepared  some  forty- 
eight  drawings  to  illustrate  it,  most  of  them  done  from  actuality. 
The  Graphic  had  the  courage  to  publish  this  in  1889,  and  paid  me 
well  for  it.  It  was  a  terribly  realistic  story  which  roused  a  vol- 
ume of  protest  from  the  mild  mannered  Graphic  readers,  espe- 
cially from  school-masters  who  thought  the  episodes  of  the 
tale  might  be  re-enacted  by  their  scholars.  Messrs.  Kegan 
Paul,  Trench  and  Triibner  published  it  as  a  book  in  1890,  but  in 
that  direction  it  was  a  dead  failure.   A  few  years  later  I  received 


THE  STORY  OF  MY  LIFE 


453 


a  commission  from  a  newspaper  agency  in  the  North  of  England 
to  write  short  stories,  and  perpetrated  six  of  these,  which 
attracted  no  attention  whatever.  Frank  Harris  pubHshed  one 
story  in  the  Saturday  Review  and  asked  for  a  second ;  but  when  I 
sent  it  to  him,  he  lost  it,  and  I  had  kept  no  copy. 

"Then  in  1904  I  began  to  work  at  a  theme  which  has  greatly 
interested  me.  It  was  to  be — don't  shudder ! — a  sequel  to  Dick- 
ens's Dombey  and  Son.  I  have  proposed  the  idea  of  publishing 
this  to  four  publishers  in  succession,  all  of  whom  have  brought 
out  other  works  of  mine  and  have  probably  not  done  so  badly  by 
their  enterprise.  But  each  in  turn  has  viewed  very  gravely, 
almost  sorrowfully,  my  desire  to  write  fiction.  So-and-so"  (I 
mentioned  the  name  of  a  firm) — "have  had  The  Gay-Donibeys 
under  consideration,  but  have  returned  the  typoscript  with  sad 
advice  to  confine  myself  to  works  of  science,  travel  or  politics;  I 

have  also  shown  it  to  of  the  Cornhill.    He  said  if  I  would 

change  the  theme  and  characters  into  a  sequel  of  one  of  Thack- 
eray's novels  it  might  just  have  a  chance ;  but  Dickens  1" 

"Well,"  said  Wells,  "he  may  have  been  right;  he  is  a  good 
man,  I  know,  and  his  father  was  a  really  great  one.  But  I'll  tell 
you  what  ...  is  the  story  finished  ?" 

"Not  quite,  but  three-quarters  of  it  is  carefully  typed  and  you 
can  more  or  less  guess  the  end,  or  at  any  rate  I  could  send  you 
notes  as  to  how  it  will  terminate." 

"Well,  forward  all  this  to  me.  Go  into  hospital  and  have  your 
operation,  and  whilst  you  are  getting  well,  I  will  show  the  ma- 
terial to  a  friend  or  several  friends  who  are  publishers,  and  try 
to  get  it  accepted ;  unless,  of  course,  I  find,  as  happens  occasion- 
ally, that  it  is  silly  rubbish,  unworthy  of  you.  For  that  is  such 
an  extraordinary  thing.  I  have  known  men  of  real  greatness  in 
this,  that,  or  the  other  direction,  who  were  beset  with  writing 
works  of  fiction — a  kind  of  secret  vice.  However,  you  send  your 
story,  and  I  will  promise  to  spend  some  time  reading  it." 

I  thanked  him  with  a  few  fervent  expressions,  and  then  we 
retraced  our  steps  to  the  house,  and  he  motored  me  to  the  little 
station  of  Easton  Park  whence  I  took  the  train  to  London. 


454 


THE  STORY  OF  MY  LIFE 


During  October,  of  that  year,  feeling  iller  and  iller,  till  at  last 
I  looked  forward  almost  with  relief  to  the  thought  of  the  men- 
aced operation,  I  typed  the  remaining  chapters  of  The  Gay- 
Dombeys  and  sent  the  whole  book  to  Wells,  and  then  went  up 
again  to  London  to  consult  Sir  Peter  Freyer.  He  fixed  a  day 
early  in  November,  and  engaged  my  room  at  a  Nursing  Home 
near  Harley  Street.  I  returned  to  Sussex  in  an  agony  of  pain, 
but  without  much  apprehension,  as  I  was  told  that  with  a  strong 
heart  there  was  very  little  danger  of  an  unfavorable  result.  I 
spent  my  last  day  at  Poling  in  an  invalid  chair,  directing  the 
re-arrangement  of  a  rockery,  and  on  the  morrow  had  to  proceed 
in  a  hired  motor — but  most  kindly  and  carefully  driven  by  a  sym- 
pathetic chauffeur,  and  with  my  wife  inside  to  look  after  me ;  and 
in  this  way,  arrived  at  the  door  of  the  Nursing  Home.  I  was 
carried  up-stairs  by  nurses,  undressed  and  put  to  bed,  and  at  last 
found  relief  from  the  agonizing  pain  of  several  previous  days. 

But  the  pain  had  brought  on  fever,  and  Sir  Peter  deferred  the 
operation  for  more  than  a  week.  I  had  never  taken  chloroform 
before,  or  had  any  operation  more  serious  than  the  extraction  of 
a  tooth;  but  everything  was  managed  with  such  kindness  and 
forethought  that  I  experienced  little  apprehension.  I  think  much 
of  the  preliminary  shudders  were  obviated  by  the  administration 
of  drugs  which  induced  a  dreamy  disregard.  When  the  moment 
came  for  action,  I  felt  that  it  offered  a  somewhat  humorous 
resemblance  to  a  State  execution.  I  was  invited  to  ascend  and 
recline  on  a  raised  couch.  The  anaesthetist  gave  me  a  small  ora- 
tion on  the  subject  of  inhaling  the  chloroform  without  resistance, 
and  almost  at  the  moment  that  he  placed  the  mask  over  mouth 
and  nose  I  was  "off." 

I  found  myself  some  time  afterwards  moist  and  damp  with 
blood,  and  very  immobile,  but  conscious.  Just  occasionally  there 
was  a  shaft  of  pain  too  staggering  to  be  borne  had  it  lasted  more 
than  a  second.  One  of  the  two  ladies — both  of  them  angels — 
who  conducted  this  Nursing  Home — was  bending  over  me,  and 
assuring  me  that  everything  was  going  to  be  all  right  in  the 
future.   She  would  soon  get  rid  of  that  pain,  and  she  gave  me  a 


THE  STORY  OF  MY  LIFE 


455 


teaspoonful  of  something  to  drink,  which  abolished  it.  Thence- 
forth my  recovery  was  rapid,  as  soon  as  I  got  rid  of  the  nausea 
left  behind  by  the  anesthetic.  In  four  days'  time  my  appetite 
became  phenomenal,  and  all  interests  were  subordinated  to  the 
meals — the  early  breakfast;  the  "nice  little  something"  at  eleven; 
the  lunch  of  roast  chicken  (or  an  equivalent  equally  good)  at  one: 
the  tea  at  four  o'clock ;  and  the  delicate  dinner  at  seven.  Never,  I 
think,  has  my  palate  been  more  attuned  to  tasting  and  my  appetitd 
keener  than  during  the  four  or  five  weeks  which  followed  the 
operation,  and  bore  my  wife  and  myself  over  Christmas  and  into 
1919,  in  East  Marylebone. 

About  a  fortnight  after  the  operation  I  received  a  business-like 
letter  from  Wells  stating  how  he  had  placed  The  Gay-Domheys 
with  Chatto  and  Windus,  on  such  and  such  terms  for  publication 
in  Great  Britain,  and  how  he  had  negotiated  a  similar  arrange- 
ment (but  more  opulently  attended)  with  The  Macmillan  Com- 
pany for  Canada  and  the  United  States.  The  agreements  were 
enclosed  to  be  read  and  signed  when  approved,  and  the  first 
proofs  would  follow  in  a  few  weeks.  Could  anything  have  been 
kinder  ? 

Sir  Peter  Freyer  was  one  of  the  most  interesting  and  regardful 
men  I  ever  met.  He  was  emphatically  an  Irishman  with  a  distinct 
Irish  accent,  and  a  strong  Home  Ruler  of  a  reasonable  kind.  His 
early  medical  life  had  been  spent  in  the  service  of  the  Government 
of  India,  and  on  that  score  nous  ne  tarimes  jamais,  for  the  last 
days  of  his  stay  in  India  coincided  with  the  time  of  my  visit  to 
that  country  of  a  thousand  interests. 

As  soon  as  I  had  recovered  from  the  first  operation  (I  had  to 
undergo  another  in  the  following  April,  1919)  I  often  went  to  his 
house  in  Harley  Street  to  lunch  or  dine,  or  to  have  tea  with  him 
— tea  and  a  talk.  He  was — most  unhappily — beginning  to  fail  in 
health  himself.  He  had  done  tremendous  surgical  work  during 
the  War  in  France  and  England,  and  this  went  on  for  a  year 
after  the  Armistice.  I  think  it  wore  him  out.  At  any  rate  to 
my  regret  which  verged  on  dismay,  this  great  surgeon  who  had 
cured  and  given  an  extension  of  life  to  thousands  of  men  and 


456 


THE  STORY  OF  MY  LIFE 


women,  died  with  some  sudden  collapse  in  1921.  Besides  giving 
me  a  further  spell  of  vigor  and  activity  when  I  seemed  done  for, 
he  opened  up  so  many  new  avenues  of  interest  in  his  speculations 
and  conjectures  regarding  human  anatomy,  the  origin  of  man 
and  the  future  developments  of  the  humian  species  that  converse 
with  him  was  a  wholesome  stimulant  to  the  brain. 

The  Gay-Domheys  was  published  in  the  spring  of  1919,  just  as 
I  was  re-entering  the  Nursing  Home  to  undergo  these  subsidiary 
operations  which  were  not  thought  to  necessitate  anything  so  seri- 
ous as  an  anesthetic.  They  caused  me  more  pain  and  apprehen- 
sion, however,  than  the  coup  de  malt  re  of  the  previous  November. 
But  they  completed  the  cure,  and  I  returned  to  Poling  at  the  end 
of  April,  1919,  feeling  healthier,  stronger  and  better  than  I  had 
done  since  the  opening  of  the  War  in  1914.  This  sense  of 
"wellness"  did  not  last  in  its  completeness  beyond  the  close  of 
1920,  after  which  year  I  was  apt  to  feel  excessive  fatigue  with 
too  much  talking,  too  much  walking,  too  much  writing  or  exertion 
or  emotion  of  any  kind.  I  therefore  took  to  living  more  continu- 
ously at  Poling  and  confined  my  foreign  journeys  to  nestling  in 
Switzerland  at  some  period  of  the  summer  between  May  and 
September. 

I  gave  up  dinner-parties  and  any  late  meal  solid  enough  to  be 
called  a  dinner.  I  ordered  my  visits  to  London  with  my  wife  in 
such  a  way  as  to  avoid  public  meetings  and  assemblies,  and  we 
confined  ourselves  as  much  as  possible  to  the  quiet  pursuit  of  our 
own  pleasures  and  interests.  Quiet  evenings  at  the  play  or  the 
cinema,  quiet  evening  meals,  the  avoidance  of  bores  (how  diffi- 
cult!), and  the  shedding  of  family  duties. 

Between  1919  and  the  time  of  finishing  this  story,  I  have  writ- 
ten and  published  four  novels,  most  of  them  projected  long  ago, 
and  one  volume  of  twenty-one  short  stories. 

I  concluded  my  War  Service  by  a  somewhat  adventurous  and 
wholly  interesting  journey  up  and  down  the  Rhine  Valley  in  the 
summer  of  1919,  as  one  of  the  War  Office  lecturers  to  the  Army 
of  Occupation.  This  journey  enabled  me  also,  as  I  was  accorded 
the  rank  of  a  French  officer  by  the  French  War  Office,  to  visit  the 


The  restoration  of  the  lizard-like  bird  of  tht  Secondary  Epoch,  Arclueopteryx 
I'lthographua,  in  Carl  Hagenbeck's  Stellingen  Gardens  (Hamburg). 


THE  STORY  OF  MY  LIFE 


457 


French  sphere.  I  quickly  passed  through  the  American-occupied 
portion  of  the  Rhineland,  whose  authorities  did  not  show  them- 
selves so  meticulous  as  to  rank  and  nationality.  I  traveled  in 
trains  packed  with  American  soldiers  who  frequently  took  me  for 
a  German  because  I  had  asked  questions  in  German  from  the  Ger- 
man railway  officials.  But  explanations  on  my  part  resulted  in 
gusty  friendliness,  and  some  of  the  American  "boys"  from  Texas 
were  amongst  the  nicest  persons  I  ever  met.  I  found  the  "moth- 
ering" of  the  American  women  at  Coblentz  a  little  tiresome, 
though  well  meant.  It  was  difficult  at  that  time  to  obtain  good 
food  and  other  necessaries  of  life  without  going  to  some  Ameri- 
can Y.  M.  C.  A.  establishment.  It  was  so,  possibly,  in  the  British 
sphere ;  there  the  Y.  M.  C.  A.  people  were  business-like  and  not 
too  affectionate.  But  the  American  "mothers"  and  "sisters"  were 
so  bubbling  over  with  Christian  charity  and  kindliness  that  they 
were  not  contented  with  selling  you  a  bun ;  they  deprecated  your 
paying  for  it,  and  seemed  to  wish  to  embrace  you  in  addition. 

In  the  French  sphere  on  the  other  hand,  every  one  entering 
who  did  not  wear  a  French  uniform  or  look  an  out-and-out 
Frenchman,  was  received  very  churlishly.  I  resented  this,  after 
my  long,  long  acquaintance  with  France,  but  at  the  same  time  it 
amused  me.  They  generally  concluded  I  was  a  German  spy,  or  a 
German  in  some  way  out  of  place ;  they  sought  to  baffle  me  by 
replying  in  Alsation-German  to  my  questions  or  observations  in 
good  British-French.  The  final  production  of  my  papers  stag- 
gered them,  with  the  assignment  to  me  of  a  French  rank.  The 
same  papers  when  shown  extorted  the  civility  and  hospitality  of 
the  various  Officers'  Clubs.  I  obtained,  however,  some  relief 
from  French  disagreeableness  by  a  visit  to  Wiesbaden.  This 
was  also  within  the  French  sphere,  but  French  military  control 
had  either  been  softened  by  its  beauty,  its  comfort,  or  its  helpless- 
ness, or  by  the  effect  of  its  waters.  It  was  certainly  difficult  to 
believe  this  place  had  ever  been  connected  with  a  War. 

The  shops  displayed  such  wealth  and  variety,  such  beauty  and 
fitness  in  the  things  they  sold  at  much  reduced  prices;  the  music 
at  the  Baths  was  divine  in  the  full  beauty  of  early  summer,  either 


458 


THE  STORY  OF  MY  LIFE 


out  of  doors  or  within  palatial  concert  rooms.  The  meals  at  the 
hotel,  the  ices,  the  fruits,  the  coffee,  chocolate  and  tea  at  the 
Baths  seemed  better  than  anything  I  had  tasted  for  years.  One 
of  my  delights  on  the  fresh  mornings  at  the  end  of  June  was  to 
walk  up  the  stream-valley,  which  for  a  long,  long  distance  seemed 
to  be  part  of  the  Baths'  domain.  At  first  the  walk  was  like 
traversing  a  sumptuously  beautiful  wild  garden,  then  by  degrees 
it  became  real,  wild,  forested  Germany,  and  so  one  went  on,  or 
could  go  on,  through  woodlands  of  exquisite  beauty  till  one 
reached  the  summit  of  mountains  two  to  three  thousand  feet  in 
height. 

This  stay  in  the  Rhineland  enabled  me  to  get  into  touch  with 
German  workers  at  Bonn  and  elsewhere  who  before  the  War 
had  been  discussing  with  me  theories  concerning  the  Bantu  lan- 
guages. The  Oxford  University  Press  had  published  the  first 
volume  of  my  work  on  the  Bantu  at  the  end  of  June,  1919;  and 
I  was  already  revising  for  the  Press,  the  second  volume,  pub- 
lished in  the  early  summer  of  1922. 

Mr.  Percy  Molteno  came  forward  about  this  time,  and  by  his 
generous  assistance,  on  top  of  an  offer  by  the  Rhodes  Trustees, 
the  African  Association  of  Liverpool,  Mr.  Leo  Weinthal  of  the 
African  W orld,  and  one  or  two  private  individuals,  he  induced 
the  Oxford  University  Press  to  effect  the  publication  of  the  sec- 
ond volume.  With  the  revising  of  proofs  therefore  between  my 
return  to  work  in  the  autumn  of  1919  and  the  spring  of  1922,  I 
was  kept  sufficiently  employed  at  Poling  down  to  about  the  time 
when  I  commenced  the  compilation  of  these  memoirs. 

The  second  volume  of  my  Comparative  Study  having  been 
prepared  for  publication,  I  applied  myself  after  1919  to  the  cor- 
rection and  amplification  of  the  first  volume.  Thanks  to  the 
assistance  of  officials  in  the  Gambia  Colony,  in  Sierra  Leone,  To- 
goland,  northern  and  southern  Nigeria;  to  the  renewed  re- 
searches of  Dr.  Bernhard  Struck  of  Leipzig;  and  the  gallant  help 
of  Archdeacon  H.  W.  Woodward  in  East  Africa  and  Mr.  W.  J. 
B.  Chapman  in  Angola,  T  have  filled  most  of  the  gaps  in  the  first 
volume's  vocabularies :  aiid  hope  this  revised  volume  may  attain 


THE  STORY  OF  MY  LIFE 


459 


publication  before  long  in  a  second  edition.  The  additions  to 
its  information  are  of  considerable  importance.  They  constitute 
a  remarkable  confirmation  of  Sigismund  Koelle's  researches,  un- 
dertaken between  1848  and  1854. 

The  mention  on  a  previous  page  of  the  Rhodes  Trustees  has 
aroused  a  request  from  one  or  two  critics  of  this  book  in  proof 
sheets  for  more  explicit  information  concerning  my  latter  rela- 
tions with  Cecil  Rhodes.  It  is  obvious  that  I  quarreled  with 
him:  how,  when,  and  why? 

I  had  arranged  terms  with  him  on  a  new  basis  in  1893  for  the 
complete  subjugation  of  the  Arabs  in  Nyasaland  which  took  place 
in  1895-6.  In  1893-4,  however,  he  cabled  to  me  asking  me  to 
join  a  section  of  his  police  force  in  southern  Rhodesia  in  attack- 
ing the  Portuguese  and  driving  them  down  to  the  coast  of  Man- 
ikaland.  I  replied  that  such  action  was  impossible  without  the 
direct  orders  of  the  Foreign  Ofifice.  He  then  announced  that  he 
repudiated  the  new  agreement  I  had  entered  into  at  Cape  Town, 
and  revoked  all  further  monetary  assistance.  I  was  therefore 
threatened  with  a  complete  loss  of  revenue,  and  was  compelled  to 
la}''  the  whole  situation  before  the  Foreign  Office,  early  in  1894. 
The  Chancellor  of  the  Exchequer — Sir  William  Harcourt — at 
once  came  to  my  relief.  He  offered  a  subsidy  of  £30,000  a  year 
(Rhodes's  increased  subsidy  was  only  £17,500),  and  proposed 
the  withdrawal  of  the  northern  Zambezian  territories  from  the 
Chartered  Company's  control.  Eventually  in  London,  when 
Rhodes  came  there  in  the  summer  of  1894,  a  compromise  was 
agreed  to.  Northern  Zambezia,  west  of  the  Lake  Nyasa  Basin, 
was  to  be  independently  administered  by  the  Chartered  Company, 
and  Nyasaland  became  virtually  a  Crown  Colony.  A  surface 
reconciliation  was  patched  up  by  Earl  Grey  between  Rhodes  and 
myself,  but  even  at  that  meeting  he  said  he  never  wished  to  see 
me  again — and  he  never  did.  The  quarrel  however  never  ex- 
tended to  the  London  directorate  of  the  Chartered  Company,  and 
with  Rhodes  himself  was  solely  based  on  my  refusal  to  join  his 
forces  in  attacking  the  Portuguese. 


CHAPTER  XXII 


Looking  back  over  my  active  life,  the  difiference  of  opinion 
which  has  been  growing,  expanding  between  myself  and  most  of 
my  countrymen,  and  of  many  Europeans  and  Americans,  is  on 
the  matter  of  Religion.  From  the  time  of  my  own  awakening 
to  the  logic  of  facts  and  discoveries  from  1880  onward,  it  has 
been  a  source  of  growing  amazement  that  intelligent  men  and 
women,  careful  students  of  real  history,  followers  of  the  teach- 
ings of  Astronomy  and  Geology,  continue  any  longer  to  believe 
the  theological  nonsense  generally  understood  by  the  term  "Re- 
ligion." The  human  side  of  religion,  which  has  had  so  little 
power  behind  it — that  defined  by  St.  Paul  as  "charity,"  though 
"charity"  in  English  has  come  to  possess  a  sneering  signification 
• — has  seemed  to  me  indisputable  in  its  importance.  Unless  Man- 
kind as  a  mass  sticks  together,  helps  Mankind ;  all  that  is  human 
in  our  race  may  well  perish  in  the  struggle  against  the  blind 
forces  of  nature.  Whereas  there  is  just  a  hope,  a  faint  struggling 
hope  that  Mankind,  united  in  purpose,  striving  to  create  and 
maintain  better  and  better  control  over  this  Planet,  over  the  fate 
and  welfare  of  its  own  species,  may  stave  off  eventually  annihila- 
tion, may  even  make  itself  (millions  or  billions  of  years  ahead) 
master  of  the  Solar  system.  Farther  than  that  I  need  not  project 
my  thoughts. 

But  that  is  not  the  religion  of  the  many.  The  many,  the  mass 
of  thinking  humanity  (and  chiefly  of  poorly-thinking  humanity) 
believes  or  pretends  to  believe  in  a  Deity;  in  a  Trinity;  or  in  a 
larger  number  of  divine  powers. 

Millions  of  black,  brown,  and  yellow  peoples  in  India  contem- 
plate in  their  thoughts  a  great  assortment  of  Gods,  of  spirits 
that  may — or  may  not — be  enshrined  in  grotesque  forms,  mostly 
images  of  Man's  construction.   But  the  divinities  of  nearly  three 

460 


THE  STORY  OF  MY  LIFE 


461 


hundred  millions  of  Indian  people,  of  such  Melanesians  or  Poly- 
nesians as  are  not  converted  to  Christianity  or  Muhammadanism, 
of  fifty  millions  of  Africans  not  as  yet  captured  by  Christian  or 
Islamic  missionaries,  and  of  a  few  million  Amerindians  or  Mon- 
gols are  little  more  than  Earth  spirits,  who  are  not  credited  with 
having  done  more  than  create  this  planet  or  some  tiny  portion  of 
it,  or  in  most  cases  have  no  higher  status  than  that  of  a  king  or 
queen  ghost,  the  spirit  of  some  dead  chief,  medicine-man  or 
witch.  The  old  religions  of  Egypt,  Greece,  Rome,  Pontus  or 
ancient  Persia  were  little  different.  The  earth  on  which  we  dwell 
was  everything  in  their  outlook.  The  stars  were  amusing  lights 
in  the  firmament,  doing  very  little  to  mitigate  the  inconvenience 
of  darkness. 

The  Jews,  beginning  with  a  Tribal  God  of  a  crabbed  nature 
thoroughly  reminiscent  of  the  scenery  of  Mount  Sinai,  gradually 
developed  the  idea  that  this  Deity  might  be  a  universal  power, 
creator  of  the  earth,  and  also  of  everything  outside  the  earth — 
the  "everything"  in  those  days  of  limited  knowledge  not  amount- 
ing to  much.  Christianity  and  Islam  in  their  theology  were  de- 
velopments of  the  Jewish  idea,  with  some  borrowings  from  other 
faiths  and  superstitions.  But  Christianity  arose  from  a  desire  to 
make  public  the  teaching  of  a  remarkable  personage,  Yeshu  or 
Yeshua,  surnamed  after  his  death  by  the  Greek  word  Christos 
("anointed"),  and  miscalled  (owing  to  defects  in  the  Greek  ren- 
dering of  Yeshu),  lesous  or  Jesus.  This  man,  so  far  as  we  can 
guess,  from  the  very  little  information  we  have  which  is  not 
mythical,  was  so  remarkable  in  the  beauty,  originality  and  truth 
of  his  utterances,  that  he  seemed  to  some  of  his  followers  divine, 
or  at  any  rate  something  more  than  merely  human.^ 

The  major  part  of  Christ's  teaching  as  recorded  in  the  first 
two,  least-tampered-with  "Gospels"  falls  on  the  ear  with  refresh- 
ing efifect,  as  being  singularly  attractive,  true,  and  of  lasting, 
world-shaping  importance.   But  in  the  years  which  succeeded  the 

^  Divinity  was  frankly  and  easily  attributed  to  remarkable  or  benevolent 
personalities  all  over  the  Eastern  World  from  Rome  to  Indo-China  down  to 
the  fifteenth  century  a.  c.  especially  in  India. 


462 


THE  STORY  OF  MY  LIFE 


Crucifixion  the  utterances  of  Jesus  Christ  were  combined  more 
and  more  with  dreary,  tedious  beHefs,  traditions,  and  ceremonies 
of  the  Jews;  and  as  the  centuries  succeeded.  His  Gospel  absorbed 
and  refurbished  this  and  that  tenet,  costume,  custom,  practise 
of  old  Eurasiatic  faiths  quite  incompatible  with  modern  beliefs 
founded  on  the  evidence  of  Science  only. 

In  the  ignorance  in  which  we  are  purposely  educated,  as  little 
as  possible  is  taught  us  about  the  Jews  during  the  hundred  years 
which  preceded  the  date  guessed  at  as  marking  the  birth  of  Jesus. 
How  much  do  Christian  children  know  about  the  great  Jewish 
teacher  Hillel,  who  died  when  Jesus  was  (presumably)  ten  years 
old,  and  whose  recorded  sayings  are,  over  and  over  again,  antici- 
pations of  some  of  the  striking  utterances  of  the  Christ  himself? 
And  Philo  of  Alexandria,  who  died  about  ten  years  after  the  con- 
jectured date  of  the  Crucifixion? 

Reading  what  Hillel  is  credited  with  having  said  or  written 
one  comes  to  understand  that  the  concepts  recorded  of  Jesus  the 
Nazarene  were  not  quite  so  isolated  as  they  seem  in  their  lan- 
guage and  nature. 

The  Christ  was  the  releaser  of  thought  and  a  stimulater  of  new 
ideas  in  the  three  years  of  His  manhood  during  which  He  came 
under  public  notice.  He  shared,  of  course,  some  limitations  of 
knowledge  existing  in  His  age.  He  knew  nothing — apparently — 
about  the  rotundity  of  the  Earth,  its  character  as  a  planet  of 
small  size  encircling  the  sun ;  and  He  believed  emphatically  in  God 
as  a  fatherly  personality.  But  His  principal  mission  He  gradually 
determined  as  an  appeal  on  behalf  of  the  universal  brotherhood 
of  Man. 

Perhaps  in  this  respect  He  was  the  first  human  recorded  to 
have  held  and  uttered  such  beliefs.  He  aroused  consequently 
more  virulent  hatred  among  the  educated  and  highly-placed  Jews 
than  in  the  minds  of  the  Romans.  Life,  however,  was  cheaply  re- 
garded in  those  days,  and  Pontius  Pilatus  (or  Pileatus),  the 
Roman  Governor,  probably  held  that  the  handing  over  of  the 
body  of  Jesus  to  the  fanatical  Jews  for  execution,  was  at  most  a 
regrettable  incident,  to  be  forgotten  in  a  week's  time,  and  cer- 


TIIR  STORY  OF  MY  LIFE 


463 


tainly  not  to  haunt  him  during  the  remaining  years  of  his  Hfe  in 
retirement,  where  it  had  no  more  cause  to  be  remembered  than 
the  thousand  other  deaths  he  had  ordered  or  permitted  in  Pales- 
tine. 

Jesus,  however,  to  whatever  extent  He  really  lived  and  suffered, 
had  an  enormous  effect  on  the  after  history  of  Mankind.  Though 
it  is  remarkable  to  note  that  His  Gospel  was  taken  over,  partly 
practised  and  believed  in,  not  by  the  people  of  His  own  race  or 
lineage  or  His  own  family,  but  by  the  population  of  Europe ;  who 
afterwards  becoming  vastly  predominant,  carried  the  religion 
founded  on  the  Christ's  teaching  into  Asia,  America  and  Africa. 

Morally,  socially,  one  can  be  a  Christian — even  fervently  so — 
without  attaching  a  vestige  of  belief  to,  or  anything  more  than  a 
little  contemptuous  interest  in  the  Jewish,  Greek,  Mithraic, 
Egyptian,  Roman  or  Keltic  myths  and  cosmogonies  which  have 
clustered  round  and  become  attached  to  the  simple,  beautiful  and 
true  teaching  of  the  Nazarene. 

The  nearest  approach  to  a  true  sketch  of  the  life  of  the  Christ 
was  written  by  a  Jew,  Israel  Zangwill;  and  if  I  believed  one 
particle  in  the  idea  of  "inspiration"  I  should  call  this  sketch 
"inspired,"  so  truly  does  it  read.  But  it  had  to  be  published  with 
other  matter,  not  necessarily  congruous,  in  the  one  book  of  Zang- 
will's  which  did  not  succeed,  yet  the  one  containing  the  finest 
things  he  has  written :  Italian  Sketches. 

The  only  other  writers  who  have  grappled  with  the  subject  in 
any  way  adequately,  with  any  local  study  properly  applied,  have 
been  Ernest  Renan  and  the  Irish  novelist,  George  Moore. 
Moore's  The  Brook  Kerith  gives  a  very  probable  picture  of'  the 
real  life  of  the  Redeemer,  though  it  is  written  through  a  coarser 
mental  medium  and  is  marred  by  carelessness  in  reconstructing 
the  aspect  of  Palestine  nineteen  hundred  years  ago,  when  there 
was  no  "prickly  pear"  in  its  landscapes.  George  Moore  forgot 
that  America  had  first  to  be  discovered  and  Mexico  to  be  reached 
by  the  Spaniards,  its  products  to  be  exported  to  the  Mediter- 
ranean world,  before  the  accursed  Turks  could  (somewhere  about 
1600  A.c.)  transport  this  cactus  to  the  semi-desert  hills  of  Pales- 
tine. 


464 


THE  STORY  OF  MY  LIFE 


So  much  for  my  views  on  Religion.  The  inward  holding  of 
these  views  and  even  some  modest  exposition  of  them  (when 
provoked)  have  never  prevented,  in  the  majority  of  cases,  my 
getting  on  exceedingly  well  with  priests  and  pastors,  bishops  and 
missionaries.  Either  they  too  had  their  doubts  in  the  age  in 
which  we  live  as  to  the  strict  truth  of  the  Old  Testament  and  the 
value  of  the  Book  of  Revelations,  or  the  worth  of  three-quarters 
of  the  Psalms  (the  remaining  quarter  being  remarkably  poet- 
ical) ;  or  they  were  sufficiently  interested  in  real,  practical,  endur- 
ing Christianity  to  welcome  my  adhesion  in  this  direction  and 
excused  me  from  professing  any  love  or  veneration  for,  or  belief 
in  a  Deity:  which  if  it  assumed  in  the  imagination  of  a  Moses 
the  character  of  a  fussy  and  fidgety  old  man,  anxious  about  the 
colors  of  his  curtains  and  the  construction  of  his  Ark;  or  insti- 
gated the  persecution  of  Paulicians  and  Protestants  in  the  early 
and  late  Middle  Ages ;  must  also  have  been,  as  the  one  and  only 
God,  the  malign  creator  of  Tyrannosaurus  and  a  hundred  other 
peculiarly  cruel,  monstrous  reptiles  of  the  Cretaceous  Epoch,  and 
the  devisor  of  endless  and  useless  grotesqueries  in  the  great  age 
of  mammals;  and  even,  in  the  putting-forth  of  Man,  the  Force 
that  hesitated  unduly  over  the  proliferation  of  the  genus. 

Thinkers  like  Cardinal  Newman  never  spent  time  or  thought  in 
considering  these  points.  Newman,  though  he  was  born  into  the 
nineteenth  century,  when  great  revelations  were  occurring  re- 
garding the  past  history  of  the  Earth  and  of  life  on  the  Earth, 
believed  still,  fanatically,  in  the  Six  Days  of  Creation,  the  trun- 
cated life  of  our  planet  in  five  thousand  years,  and  all  the  other 
Hebrew-Babylonian  myths. 

The  staggering  truths  and  discoveries  revealed  in  Astronom- 
ical research  and  the  study  of  Geology  have  taken  a  very  long 
time  to  penetrate  human  consciousness,  imagination,  and  religious 
ideas.   Let  us  turn  round  and  think  to  what  extent. 

In  1860,  six  hundred  millions  of  Asiatics,  one  hundred  millions 
of  Africans  and  almost  the  entire  population,  then,  of  the  New 
World  (sixty  millions)  except  about  fifty  thousand  educated  in- 
habitants of  the  United  States  and  Canada;  and  all  the  millions  of 


THl-:  STORY  OF  MY  LIFE 


465 


Europe,  barring  another  fifty  thousand  scientific  thinkers  in 
Britain,  the  Netherlands,  Germany,  Scandinavia,  Russia,  Austria, 
France  and  Piedmont  beheved — when  they  thought  about  it  at  all 
— that  the  Earth  was  the  center  of  everything. 

The  Christian  child  was  made  to  sing  "Twinkle,  twinkle,  little 
star — how  I  wonder"  (very  feebly)  "what  you  are.  Up  above 
the  world  so  high,  like  a  diamond  in  the  sky."  It  really  did  not, 
as  a  matter  of  fact,  wonder  or  think  about  it  at  all;  it  pondered 
over  what  it  was  going  to  have  for  breakfast  the  next  morning 
and  whether  it  would  get  through  its  school  lessons  without  pun- 
ishment. 

All  through  the  periodical  newspaper  literature  sixty  years 
ago,  in  what  we  call  the  civilized  world,  it  was  assumed  almost 
without  question  that  the  age  of  our  Planet  only  went  back  about 
five  thousand  to  six  thousand  years,  and  that  all  life  on  its  sur- 
face, save  what  was  conserved  in  the  Ark,  had  been  drowned  by 
a  dissatisfied  Deity  and  proliferated  again  in  three  or  four  thou- 
sand years.  This  measure  of  destruction  accounted  for  the  fos- 
sils in  the  rocks. 

The  six  hundred  millions  of  Asia  never  thought  about  the  mat- 
ter at  all,  except  in  a  series  of  inchoate  nightmares.  To  this  day 
it  is  said,  in  the  newspapers  published  in  the  English  language, 
that  five  or  six  millions  of  Baptists  in  the  United  States  believe  on 
the  Hnes  of  the  Six  Days  of  Creation,  and  are  threatening  physical 
violence  towards  the  thinkers  who  may  differ  from  them  as  to  the 
age  of  the  Earth  and  its  relative  importance  in  the  Universe. 

I  only  wish  they  were  right,  and  that  the  discoveries  and  deduc- 
tions of  astronomers,  mathematicians,  chemists,  and  metallurgists 
did  not  force  me  to  part  company  with  them  and  to  conceive  of 
this  Planet,  this  world  on  which  we  dwell,  as  a  mere  grain  of  dust 
in  the  vast,  visible  Universe.  This  is  not  necessarily  too  con- 
temptuous a  deduction,  for  grains  of  dust  as  we  measure  them 
can  be  very  important,  more  important  in  their  effects  than  a 
haystack  or  a  hill.  The  Earth  is  at  any  rate  solid,  or  practically 
so,  like  Mars,  Venus  and  Mercury :  and  not  mainly  gassy  like  the 
Sun  and  the  larger  planets.    Some  of  these  when  their  matter 


466 


THE  STORY  OF  MY  LIFE 


has  concentrated  and  cooled  down  may  not  be  larger  than  the 
Earth  to  such  an  incredible  degree  as  they  are  at  present.  Still, 
there  is  the  situation,  as  Science  determines  it  at  the  present  day. 

Mankind  has  grown  in  the  past  million  years  to  be  in  each  indi- 
vidual an  intelligent  amalgam  of  countless  specks  of  living  mat- 
ter, a  real  analogy  to  a  State,  a  nation,  with  a  governing  power 
concentrated  in  the  brain,  a  single  Will  emanating  from  the  con- 
junction of  the  millions  of  atoms  contained  within  our  skins. 

There  may  be  no  other  thing  like  us  in  the  Universe.  For 
aught  we  know  it  may  have  been  only  on  this  speck  of  a  Planet 
that  intelligent  life  has  come  into  existence  by  some  fortuitous 
accident.  We — Mankind — may  be  the  germ  of  a  Deity,  which, 
as  Du  Maurier  half  guessed,  shall  grow  up  and  expand  on  this 
Planet  in  the  course  of  millions  of  years  to  follow;  rule  the 
Planet,  get  control  over  all  its  forces  within  and  without;  then 
rise  superior  to  its  atmosphere,  dominate  other  planets  and  the 
Sun  itself.  It  is  quite  as  permissible  to  let  one's  thoughts  wonder 
over  such  a  possibility,  as  over  entering  unplaced  Paradises  of 
gold  and  silver,  agate  and  jasper,  chrysoprase  and  jacinth,  with 
eternal  chanting  of  oriental  forms  of  adoration  before  a  God 
who  is  only  a  very  superior  Sultan. 

But  the  outcome  of  my  own  deductions  long  ago  was  the 
resolve  to  turn  my  thoughts,  my  mental  outlook,  away  from  the 
Deities  generated  in  the  imagination  of  Neolithic  and  Iron  Age 
Man,  and  foisted  on  us  by  the  conservative  mind  of  those  who 
still  rule  us  from  the  Church,  the  Synagogue,  the  Mosque,  and 
the  Editorial  offices  of  the  Press. 

Muhammad  and  Muhammadanism. — One  of  the  worries  of 
my  life  has  been  an  almost  vain  effort  to  get  the  name  of  the 
Arabian  prophet  properly  spelled  in  English.  In  no  direction  has 
European  perversity  been  more  strongly  shown  than  in  the  ren- 
dering in  Latin  letters  of  this  name.  I  suppose  it  originated  in 
the  intense  dislike  felt  by  Western  Europe  in  the  Dark  Ages  for 
this  rising  of  the  southern  Mediterranean  peoples  against  Chris- 
tianity.   The  Spaniards,  French,  Portuguese  and  Italians  posi- 


THE  STORY  OF  MY  LIFE 


467 


tively  disdained  to  listen  when  Muhammad's  name  was  pro- 
nounced in  their  hearing  so  as  to  render  it  correctly.  They  turned 
it  into  Mafoma,  Mahound,  Maomet,  Mahomet;  and  the  English 
of  the  early  nineteenth  century  followed  with  "Mohammed." 

There  is  no  "o,"  there  is  no  "e"  in  the  Arabic  language; 
though,  I  should  think  "Mohammed"  was  composed  by  conscien- 
tious Anglo-Indians  wishing  to  get  nearer  to  the  truth. 

In  Arabic,  the  name  is  supposed  to  come  from  an  ancient  root, 
H'amada — "the  praised."  The  initial  Mu-  is  a  common  Arabic 
prefix,  giving  generally  a  personal  character  to  the  noun  formed 
from  the  verb-root,  so  that  "Muhammad"  would  mean  "the 
praised  one,"  "the  bepraised." 

The  Turks  have  been  in  their  way  almost  as  silly  and  as  wanton 
in  their  mis-pronunciation  of  the  Prophet's  name.  Thus  we  have 
had  forced  on  us  "Mehemet  Ali"  instead  of  "Muhammad  Ali," 
the  Viceroy  of  Egypt  one  hundred  years  ago. 

But  throughout  thirteen  hundred  years  of  history  the  name  has 
always  been  spelled  similarly  by  the  Arabs  or  those  using  the 
Arabic  alphabet :  .  This  rendering  can  be  simply  and 
easily  transliterated  and  pronounced  as  Muhammad. 

Somewhere  about  1868  this  spelling  came  into  use  in  Britain 
amongst  authors  who  gave  a  first-hand  study  to  Arabian  or  Mu- 
hammadan  questions.  By  the  close  of  the  nineteenth  century 
Muhammad  was  the  form  adopted  by  the  various  Government 
offices  of  Great  Britain,  India  and  Africa.  But  the  British  Press 
(and  still  more  the  American)  remained  steeped  in  ignorance; 
and  since  the  close  of  the  Great  War  this  ignorance  has  been 
strengthened  into  audacity.  Printing  firms  in  Great  Britain  and 
the  United  States  when  charged  with  the  production  of  my  books 
have  gone  out  of  their  way  to  mis-spell  Muhammad  as  "Ma- 
homet" and  "Mohammed." 

If  challenged  they  refer  to  the  Encyclopaedia  Britannica,  which 
in  the  ignorance  of  the  eighteenth  century  started  with  "Ma- 
homet," and  has  been  chained  to  that  perversion  ever  since, 
unable  to  revert  to  the  correct  form  of  the  name  in  Arabic.  The 
Arabs  retort  by  mis-spelling  the  name  of  the  founder  of  Chris- 


468 


THE  STORY  OF  MY  LIFE 


tianity  as  Issa,  instead  of  Yeshu ;  but  as  we  pronounce  this  name 
"Djizas"  we  are  not  much  nearer  to  the  truth.  I  shall  go  down 
to  my  grave  still  fighting,  still  insisting  on  the  only  right  render- 
ing of  the  name — Muhammad. 

Otherwise,  though  I  struggle  to  secure  a  right  interpretation  of 
Muhammad's  name  in  Latin  letters,  I  have  the  greatest  contempt 
for  his  theology,  for  the  religion  he  invented  or  adapted  from 
the  corrupt  Christianity  of  the  seventh  century  or  the  crabbed 
Judaism  of  that  period.  This  has  now  become  the  "faith"  of 
sixty  millions  in  the  Indian  Empire,  thirty  millions  of  Javanese, 
ten  millions  of  Borneans,  Celebesians,  Sumatrans  and  Philip- 
pine Islanders,  twenty  millions  of  Malays,  some  forty  millions  of 
Arabized  Chinese  in  southwestern  China,  thirty  to  forty  miUions 
of  Turks,  Tatars,  Afghans,  Persians,  Syrians  and  Arabs;  and 
about  forty-five  millions  of  Arabized  Lybians,  Egyptians,  Ham- 
ites,  Fulas,  and  Negroes  in  Africa — two  hundred  thirty-five  mil- 
lions of  Dark  Whites,  Negroes,  Mongols,  and  Mongoloids. 

The  food  tabus  enforced  by  Muhammadans  (as  by  the  Jews) 
bore  little  or  no  relation  to  questions  of  wholesomeness,  but  were 
promulgated  for  totemistic  reasons  we  should  describe  as  "non- 
sense." Muhammad  denounced  the  drinking  of  the  fermented 
juice  of  the  grape — no  distilled  spirits  were  known  in  his  day — 
and  his  denunciation  checked  the  growing  drunkenness  of  the 
Arabs;  but  Persian  influence  redressed  the  balance;  and  many  a 
Muhammadan  dynasty  in  Persia,  Turkey,  Syria,  or  Egypt  has 
come  to  ruin  through  its  bibulous  habits.  The  faith  of  Islam  is 
almost  a  burlesque,  a  grotesque  copy  of  Judaism;  just  as  Juda- 
ism, combined  with  the  influence  of  other  ancient  faiths  and  su- 
perstitions in  Asia  Minor,  the  Balkan  Peninsula,  Constantinople, 
and  Italy,  has  done  its  utmost  to  render  the  teaching  of  Yeshu 
bar  Mariam  (or  bar  Yosef)  unacceptable  by  sensible,  educated, 
enlighteded  people  of  the  present  generation. 

My  Garden. — This  has  certainly  played  a  large  part  in  my 
bodily  and  mental  activities  since  1906.  It  seemed  to  me  in 
earlier  years  pitiful  that  I  could  become  so  absorbed  in  the  dispo 


THE  STORY  OF  MY  LIFE 


469 


sition  and  planting  of  four  acres,  when  not  long  previously  I  had 
concentrated  my  interest  on  the  acquisition  for  British  control  of 
four  hundred  thousand  square  miles  in  various  parts  of  Africa. 
But  after  all,  I  suppose,  it  may  be  accounted  for  midway  between 
the  infinitely  great,  which  is  often  very  vaporous  and  lacking  in 
concentration,  and  the  infinitely  little  which  requires  an  eye-tiring 
microscope  for  one's  intellectual  revels. 

I  found  the  house  where  I  live  a  farmhouse  which  had  begun 
existence  in  1180  as  a  monastic  building,  inhabited  by  the  Knights 
of  St.  John,  possibly  even  the  Templars.  About  1577,  the  three 
resident  knights  being  Roman  Catholics  were  chased  away  or 
discreetly  withdrawn,  and  the  neighboring  farmers  were  said  to 
have  plundered  the  very  solid  little  building  as  far  as  they  could. 
It  was  more  likely  the  out-houses  that  they  pulled  to  pieces.  One 
sees  fragments  of  their  plunder  built  into  neighboring  barns  and 
farmhouses.  The  grounds  were  brought  into  order  at  the  end  of 
the  eighteenth  centur}^  when  for  a  hundred  years  and  more  the 
house  resumed  the  title  of  "St.  John's  Priory,"  and  became  the 
residence  of  a  yeoman  family  (the  Blundens),  of  some  note. 

The  interior  of  the  house  was  however  rendered  hideous  and 
vulgar,  the  beautiful  Tudor  casements  (pictured  in  early  illustra- 
tions of  the  house)  were  replaced  by  cheap  nineteenth  century 
French  glass-doors  and  exceedingly  ugly  bedroom  windows ;  and 
much  of  the  garden  had  become  meadowland  or  fowl-runs. 

The  house  I  restored  as  much  as  possible  to  its  old  condition 
and  appearance.  Much  of  the  hideosities  were  accretions,  and 
when  removed  the  old  Sussex  flint  or  chalk  was  there  to  be  seen, 
or  the  Elizabethan  brickwork  of  the  fire-places,  or  the  garden 
walls,  or  the  stone  arches  of  Plantagenet  days. 

But  the  garden — three-quarters  of  it — had  to  be  recreated,  or 
made  for  the  first  time.  Belts  of  trees  were  then  planted  to  act  as 
they  grew  up  as  wind-screens,  shielding  the  tenderer  parts  of  the 
garden  from  the  fierce  Atlantic  gales.  Carmichael  Thomas  (re- 
tired from  managing  the  Graphic  to  a  wood  on  a  Kentish  hill- 
top) sent  me  many  birches,  which  now  look  as  though  they  had 
always  lived  with  us.  I  planted  oaks  and  elms,  horse-chestnuts, 
willows,  hawthorns,  ashes,  almonds,  lilacs,  firs,  pines,  yews  and 


470 


THE  STORY  OF  MY  LIFE 


cypresses.  Various  forms  of  Pyrus  which  flowered  in  February, 
March  and  April,  strange  apples  from  Central  Asia  (bursting 
in  May  into  magenta  blossom),  wild  cherries  and  tame  and  Bur- 
bank's  Wonder  (a  hybrid  between  plum  and  apricot,  and  truly  a 
wonder  for  its  early  blossom  and  its  gorgeously  colored  fruits,  a 
blend  of  gold  and  mauve).  I  inserted  numerous  laburnums — 
golden-yellow  and  flesh-pink — along  the  banks  of  the  tiny  stream 
which  was  my  eastern  boundary.  I  revived,  recovered,  re-invig- 
orated great  bushes  of  quinces  along  the  course  of  this  tiny 
stream,  forgotten  when  we  first  came  there  in  the  maze  of  a 
disorderly  jungle. 

We  have  of  old  time  deodars,  a  few  tall  firs,  gigantic  Japanese 
yews,  and  a  Virginian  "cedar"  (which  is  not  a  true  cedar  at  all — 
how  few  people  realize  that  no  real  cedar  comes  from  anywhere 
but  the  Himalayas,  Lebanon,  and  the  Atlas  Mountains?).  We 
have  larches,  Scotch  pines  from  Bournemouth,  spruce  firs  from 
Switzerland ;  and  Ilex  trees  which  have  lived  here  for  a  hundred 
years. 

My  sister-in-law,  Lady  Boston,  sent  us  many  years  ago  five 
kinds  of  dafifodil  from  her  Anglesey  garden.  They  have  popu- 
lated since  all  the  appropriate  spaces  of  our  four  acres ;  and  there 
are  in  addition,  which  I  tremulously  guard  from  tourist-raids, 
patches  of  wild  Sussex  daffodils — growing,  increasing,  multiply- 
ing, in  our  two  orchards.  I  remember  when  I  first  took  over  this 
house  and  ground  they  grew  in  the  farmers'  meadows  outside; 
they  grew  and  blossomed  deliciously  in  the  Duke's  woods  across 
the  road;  grew  throughout  much  of  the  landscapes  of  Sussex. 
But  about  1906  the  accursed  Gypsies,  who,  ever  since,  have  been 
destroying  the  charm  and  color  of  Sussex  landscapes  for  paltry 
gain  pounced  on  them  in  the  woods  and  fields,  dug  them  up,  and 
wheeled  them  away  to  sell  in  Brighton,  Worthing,  Littlehampton 
and  other  mushroom  places.  The  farmers  raised  not  the  slight- 
est objection  to  the  trespass  or  the  despoiling.  The  only  person 
besides  myself,  who  minded  or  who  took  any  notice  indeed,  was 
the  Duke's  agent,  who  died  on  military  service  in  the  War. 

I  have  to  be  content  mainly  with  the  beauty  of  flowers  and 


upper  left:    The  Honorable   Lady  Upper    right:    The    author    at  St. 

Johnston,  O.B.E.,  in  1919.  John's  Priory  in  1914. 

Beloiv:  Poling  Corner  on  a  winter's  day. 


THE  STORY  OF  MY  LIFE 


471 


foliage,  the  evidence  of  history  contained  within  the  limits  of  my 
four  acres;  for  I  have  lit  on  Sussex  at  an  evil  period,  when  all 
sense  of  beauty  in  detail  has  been  lost  to  the  townspeople  of  Arun- 
del and  of  the  mushroom  coast  cities  and  conglomeration  of 
villas;  when  the  Gypsy,  (off-scouring  mainly  of  East  London) 
does  as  he  likes  in  the  country  lanes  and  on  the  commons,  pro- 
vided he  does  not  steal  too  much  game ;  so  that  perhaps  appropri- 
ately as  I  grow  old,  I  restrict  my  gaze  within  the  tiny  limits  of 
my  own  domain. 

Gypsies. — One  direction  amongst  others  in  which  I  have  been 
soured  in  my  old  age  and  have  parted  company  with  public  opin- 
ion in  Sussex  is  on  the  score  of  the  Gypsies.  The  original  Gypsies 
who  entered  this  country  during  the  Middle  Ages  were  descended 
from  a  nomad  tribe  or  tribes  which  invaded  Persia  and  Europe 
in  the  thirteenth  and  fourteenth  centuries  and  which  came  from 
India,  from  the  lands  bordering  the  Indus  River.  They  made  a 
considerable  stay  in  Mesopotamia  when  the  Turks  were  oppress- 
ing the  Arabs. 

They  played  a  noteworthy  part  in  Central  Europe — Hungary, 
Bohemia  and  the  Rhinelands;  they  passed  through  France  into 
Spain ;  through  Mesopotamia  into  Egypt ;  and  from  France  they 
made  their  way  into  England  and  Scotland  early  in  the  sixteenth 
century. 

They  were  always  more  of  a  nuisance  than  anything  else ;  still, 
in  the  early  nineteenth  century  they  stirred  the  attention  of  the 
romantically-inclined  English  novelists,  and  so  had  a  glamour  of 
romance  thrown  about  them  which  they  did  not  deserve.  Yet,  it 
is  to  be  admitted  that  the  earlier  type  of  Gypsy  man  and  woman 
was  usually  a  good-looking  creature. 

In  the  second  half  of  the  nineteenth  century  they  frequented 
with  avidity  the  race-courses,  especially  those  connected  with 
petty  racing  and  fraudulent  betting  in  Sussex,  Kent  and  Essex. 
They  were  joined  in  this  pursuit  by  a  section  of  the  East  End 
population  of  London  which  was  beginning  to  find  life  in  White- 
chapel,  Limehouse,  Shadwell  and  Wapping  unbearable. 

The  Gypsies  of  Sussex  have  resulted  from  a  mixture  of  these 


472 


THE  STORY  OF  MY  LIFE 


two  strains ;  the  old  Romany,  the  scurvy,  low-down,  uneducated, 
lousy,  unkempt,  refuse  people  of  Eastern  London,  drawn  to  the 
Sussex  race-courses  and  engendered  there  in  a  new  brand  with 
the  Romany  mixture.  Twenty  to  thirfy  years  ago  they  were  little 
noticed.  They  attended  the  races  and  did  not  conduct  themselves 
worse  than  the  rest  of  the  riff-raff.  But  about  twenty  years  back 
in  time  the  English  world  began  to  awake  in  a  pitiful,  perverse 
way  to  the  beauty  of  wild  flowers.  The  idea  penetrated  to  the 
Gypsy  mind  that  in  the  spring  months  it  was  an  easy  way  to  make 
a  little  money  to  ravage  the  woods,  lanes,  downs ;  pluck  the  wild 
flowers  wholesale  and  dig  up  their  roots  and  offer  them  to  the 
town-dwellers  and  tourists. 

Thus  by  degrees  during  the  past  eighteen  years  I  have  watched 
the  daffodil,  primrose,  and  bluebell  being  gradually  exterminated 
from  the  Sussex  landscapes  as  they  are  from  those  of  Surrey, 
Kent,  and  other  Home  counties ;  and  anywhere  near  Birmingham, 
Bristol,  Manchester,  Liverpool,  manufacturing  Yorkshire, 
Leicester  and  Northampton.  Gradually  these  flower  shows  are 
being  extinguished  everywhere  on  unenclosed  lands  to  which 
public  access  is  possible.  And  of  course  the  amount  of  property 
in  Sussex  that  is  guarded  from  the  Gypsy  by  enclosure  within 
high  walls  is  very  small. 

The  Gypsies  live  in  unbelievable  filth ;  ninety  per  cent,  of  their 
children  grow  up  absolutely  illiterate.  They  are  such  a  prey  to 
vermin — lice  of  three  species,  bugs,  fleas — that  their  offspring  are 
not  tolerated  in  the  State  schools  for  fear  of  infecting  the  other 
pupils.  Their  parents  make  enough  money;  however,  to  live  on, 
at  the  race-course,  and  by  the  sale  of  wild  flowers  and  poached 
game  in  the  seaside  towns. 

During  the  winter  months  they  live  in  hovels  on  the  outskirts 
of  Chichester,  Brighton,  Bognor,  Horsham,  Shoreham,  Lewes 
and  Hastings.  For  the  rest  of  the  year  they  lead  a  rather  enjoy- 
able life  as  slow-moving  nomads  on  the  downs  of  South  Essex, 
and  in  the  woodlands  of  Central  Sussex. 

For  some  inconceivable  reason  they  are  adored  by  the  mass  of 
the  Sussex  townspeople  and  by  journalists  who  do  not  know 


THE  STORY  OF  MY  LIFE 


473 


them ;  they  are  only  disliked  by  a  few  sensible  old  ladies,  by 
myself,  and  by  the  Sussex  police,  who  know  them  too  well. 

Occasionally  they  establish  a  reign  of  terror  in  little-visited  dis- 
tricts to  the  north  of  the  South  Downs.  One  hears  vague  rumors 
through  the  police ;  but  the  rumors  find  little  sympathy  in  the  local 
Press;  and  farmers  are  silent  on  the  subject  because,  although 
the  Gypsy  may  be  a  nuisance  in  the  winter,  he  furnishes  cheap 
and  handy  labor  between  May  and  October ;  and  I  have  never  met 
a  Sussex  farmer  yet  who  cared  one  snap  of  the  fingers  for  the 
local  flora.  The  thing  which  moves  the  Sussex  farmer  to  deep 
vibration  of  enthusiasm  is  Corrugated  Iron,  which  he  thinks  a 
beautiful  as  well  as  a  useful  material. 

Sussex,  indeed,  is  tending  to  become  a  Corrugated  Iron  county. 
It  has  no  public  institution  of  control  which  objects  to  the  ugli- 
ness of  corrugated  iron  and  strewn  paper,  no  effective  body  of 
citizens  which  has  ever  formed  or  been  able  to  enforce  any  opin- 
ion on  the  preservation  of  scenic  beauty,  with  due  regard  to  mak- 
ing proper  use  of  the  soil.  An  educated  public  opinion  in  Sussex 
has  to  be  created  and  to  acquire  then  the  force  requisite  to  eschew 
ugliness  and  punish  the  needless  destruction  of  landscape  color 
and  form,  and  of  objects  of  historical  interest.  Such  a  de- 
gree of  educated  public  opinion  would  negative  the  erection  of 
surpassingly  hideous,  corrugated  iron,  road-side  garages  for 
speculative  motor  hirers,  or  any  one  else,  the  arched  monstrosities 
one  now  sees  every  five  miles  or  so  along  the  country  roads,  pro- 
jecting to  the  very  edge  of  the  roadway. 

Such  a  concentration  of  cultivated  minds,  backed  by  the  force 
of  the  law,  might  save  the  more  effective  wild  flowers  from  exter- 
mination or  transference  to  private  gardens,  might  save  the 
heather  year  by  year  from  being  burned  and  charred  for  acres  or 
square  miles  by  Gypsy  fires.  Such  a  force  might  m  time  be 
strengthened  to  tackle  the  Augean  stables  of  suburbs  surrounding 
Brighton,  which  are  threatening  the  amenities  of  the  county  for 
ten  miles  round. 

The  Sussex  Archaeological  Society  or  its  members,  independ- 


474 


THE  STORY  OF  MY  LIFE 


ently — have  made  surprising  discoveries  of  late  years,  revealing 
with  specimens  (ever  fewer  and  fewer  as  one  retreats  in  time) 
the  history,  fauna  and  flora  of  the  county  a  few  hundred,  a  few 
thousand,  one,  three,  five  hundred  thousand  years  ago.  Few 
divisions  of  England  have  had  a  more  interesting  record  than 
Sussex,  back  to  the  time  when  Great  Britain  and  Ireland  made  up 
a  fantastic  peninsula  joined  by  a  short,  broad  isthmus  with 
France  and  Belgium.  Sussex  ranks  with  Java,  the  Rhine  Valley, 
and  Central  Zambezia  as  having  been  the  abode  of  early  distinct 
genera  and  species  of  the  human  type.  Unless  and  until  the  bones 
of  Eoanthropos  are  found  elsewhere,  Sussex  deserves  to  be  re- 
garded as  the  first  of  English  counties,  not  a  mere  camping 
ground  for  frowsy  Gypsies,  something  better  than  the  back  gar- 
den of  raffish  Victorian  Brighton.  This  wen  should  be  forbidden 
to  extend  any  farther.  Its  road-side  and  its  field  advertisement- 
boards  of  pickles  and  gherkins,  bicycles  and  patent  medicines, 
nursing  milk  and  whisky  should  be  destroyed,  banished.  Similar 
measures  should  be  taken  with  other  ugliness-breeding  coastal 
towns — Hastings  and  its  suburbs.  Worthing,  Littlehampton, 
Bognor,  and  the  staggering  accretions  that  have  grown  up  round 
Selsey  Bill.  Of  all  the  counties  of  England,  Sussex  must  be 
saved  from  the  hands  of  the  speculative  builder,  the  low-down 
racing  man,  the  Gypsy,  the  motor-manufacturer,  the  flower- 
picker,  paper-strewer,  and  the  user  of  naked  corrugated  iron. 


THE  END 


APPENDIX 


APPENDIX 


List  of  Sir  Harry  Johnston's  Books  (as  apart  from 
newspaper  and  magazine  articles). 

My  letters  on  the  Tunisian  Question  appeared  in  the  Globe 
newspaper  between  January  and  June,  1880,  but  were  never 
re-published  in  book  form  as  has  sometimes  been  alleged.  I  never 
completed  and  published  as  a  book  my  studies  of  the  Regency  of 
Tunis  in  1880,  but  they  are  given  here  pretty  much  as  they  were 
written. 

In  the  British  Museum  Library  Catalogue  the  first  published 
work  attributed  to  me  is  a  Report  on  the  Natural  History  of 
Angola. 

This  is  bound  up  in  a  volume  with  entirely  incongruous  articles 
on  Biology  by  other  writers.  It  was  drawn  up  for  the  informa- 
tion of  the  Earl  of  Mayo  when  he  was  preparing  his  exploring 
journey  undertaken  shortly  afterwards.  The  Report  or  Article 
has  no  value  at  the  present  time  as  it  was  compiled  from  earlier 
authorities  and  was  written  before  I  had  any  personal  acquain- 
tance with  Angola. 

My  first  published  book  (re-published  in  a  later  edition  in 
1894)  was  The  River  Congo  (Messrs.  Sampson  Low,  Mars- 
ton).   This  appeared  at  the  beginning  of  1884 ;  there  followed : — 

The  Kilimanjaro  Expedition.  (Kegan  Paul,  Trench  & 
Co.,  1886.) 

The  History  of  a  Slave.  (Kegan  Paul,  Trench  &  Co., 
1890.) 

Livingstone  and  the  Exploration  of  Central  Africa. 
(George  Philip  &  Son,  1891.) 

British  Central  Africa  :  the  Territories  under  British  influ- 
ence North  of  the  Zambezi.  (Methuen  &  Co.,  1897.  Later 
edition  1904.) 

477 


478 


THE  STORY  OF  MY  LIFE 


A  History  of  the  Colonization  of  Africa  by  Alien 
Races.  (Cambridge  University  Press,  1899.  Later  and  enlarged 
edition  1913.) 

The  Uganda  Protectorate.  (Hutchinson  &  Co.,  1902. 
Later  edition  1904.) 

British  Mammals.    (Hutchinson  &  Co.,  1903.) 
The  Nile  Quest.    (Lawrence  and  Bullen,  1903.) 
Liberia.    (Plutchinson  &  Co.,  1906.) 

George  Grenfell  and  the  Congo.  (Hutchinson  &  Co., 
1908.) 

A  History  and  Description  of  the  British  Empire  in 
Africa.    (National  Societies'  Depository,  Westminster,  1909). 

The  Negro  in  the  New  World.    (Methuen  &  Co.,  1910.) 

The  Opening  up  of  Africa.  (Williams  &  Norgate,  1911; 
Henry  H>olt  &  Co.,  America,  1911.) 

Views  and  Reviews  :  from  the  Outlook  of  an  Anthropologist. 
(WilHams  &  Norgate,  1912.) 

Phonetic  Spelling.    (Cambridge  University  Press,  1913.) 

Pioneers  in  West  Africa;  Pioneers  in  Canada;  Pioneers 
IN  India;  Pioneers  in  Australasia;  Pioneers  in  Tropical 
America;  Pioneers  in  South  Africa;  A  Record  of  European 
Discovery  and  Conquest.  Six  volumes.  (Blackie  and  Son,  Glas- 
gow, 1912-14;  republished  1923.) 

Common  Sense  in  Foreign  Policy.  (Smith,  Elder — trans- 
ferred to  John  Murray,  1913.) 

East  Africa.  (In  the  Oxford  Survey  of  the  British  Empire 
— Clarendon  Press,  Oxford — 1914.) 

A  Gallery  of  Heroes  and  Heroines.  (Wells,  Gardner, 
Darton  &  Co.,  1915.) 

The  Truth  about  the  War:  Lest  We  Forget.  {Review  of 
Reviews,  1916.) 

Science  and  Religion  :  A  Generation  of  Religious  Progress. 
(Watts  &  Co.,  1916.) 

Impero  e  Libert.\  :  Preface  to  work  on  British  Empire  by 
Commendatore  Carlo  Paladini.    (Bemporad,  Florence,  1916.) 


APPENDIX 


479 


An  Introduction  to  Trade,  Poi.itics,  and  Christianity  in 
Africa  and  the  East,  by  A.  J.  Macdonald,  M.  A.  (Longmans, 
Green  &  Co.,  1916.) 

The  Black  Man's  Part  in  the  War.  (Simpkin,  Marshall, 
Hamilton,  Kent,  1917.) 

International  Interference  in  African  Affairs:  Por- 
tion of  the  Journal  of  Comparative  Legislation  and  International 
Law.    (John  Murray,  1918.) 

Comparative  Study  of  the  Bantu  and  Semi-Bantu  Lan- 
guages.   Vol.  I.    (Oxford  University  Press,  1919.) 

The  Gay-Dombeys:  A  Novel.  (Chatto  &  Windus,  1919; 
The  Macmillan  Company,  America,  1919.) 

The  Backward  Peoples  and  Our  Relations  with  Them. 
(Oxford  University  Press,  1920.) 

Mrs.  Warren's  Daughter:  A  Novel.  (Chatto  &  Windus, 
1920;  The  Macmillan  Company,  America,  1920.) 

The  Man  Who  Did  the  Right  Thing:  A  Novel.  (Chatto 
&  Windus,  1921 ;  The  Macmillan  Company,  America,  1921.) 

The  Veneerings:  A  Novel.  (Chatto  &  Windus,  1922;  The 
Macmillan  Company,  America,  1922.) 

The  Comparative  Study  of  the  Bantu  and  Semi-Bantu 
Languages.   Vol.  II.    (Oxford  University  Press,  1922.) 

Introductory  Chapter  to  Barotseland  by  D.  W.  Stirke.  (John 
Bale,  Sons,  &  Danielsson,  1922.) 

Little  Life  Stories.  (Chatto  &  Windus,  1923;  The  Mac- 
millan Company,  America,  1923.) 

The  Story  of  My  Life.  (Chatto  &  Windus,  1923;  The 
Bobbs-Merrill  Company,  America,  1923.) 

I  also  wrote  as  an  expression  of  my  opinions  a  rather  long 
preface  to  a  new  edition  of  Winwood  Reade's  Martyrdom  of 
Man,  published  by  Messrs.  Kegan  Paul,  Trench  and  Triibner 
somewhere  about  1910. 


INDEX 


INDEX 


Abbeville,  442,  443,  448,  450. 
Abbotsbury  Swannery,  73. 
Abercorn  (Tanganyika),  252. 
Aberdare,   first    Lord  (President, 

Royal  Geographical  Society),  iii. 
Abyssinia,  128,  414. 
Acclimatation,  Jardin  d',  316. 
Accra,  181,  182. 
Accra  cooks,  153,  174. 
Achill  Island,  361  ei  scq. 
Aden,  128,  129,  133. 
Admiralty,  the,  180,  181. 
Advertisements,  474. 
Africa,  62  ct  scq.,  72,  73,  464,  469. 
African  Association  of  Liverpool, 

178,  458. 

African  Lakes  Company,  210,  211, 
222,  235,  239,  280,  286,  299. 

African  Philolog>',  413,  458. 

African  Society,  the,  364  ct  seq.,  368. 

Agnes  Johnston,  Author's  aunt,  12. 

Agnes  Johnston,  Author's  sister 
(Mrs.  Yule),  293,  305. 

Agra,  293. 

Ainu,  the  Hairy,  26. 
Aissawia  sect,  the,  324  et  scq. 
Akasa — mouth  of  Niger,  185,  186, 

188,  196. 
Akron,  Ohio,  432. 

Akwa  (Semi-Bantu  people),  190,  191. 

Alabama,  392,  396,  400. 

Albert  Nyanza,  the,  338,  341  et  seq. 

Albury  House  (Duke  of  Northumb- 
erland's), 352. 

Alcohol,  3,  283. 

Alcott,  Louisa,  397. 

Alderson,  Miss,  202,  203. 

Alexandra,  Queen  (Princess  of 
Wales),  114,  333  et  scq. 

Algebra,  22. 

Algeria,  60  et  seq.,  317,  363,  409 

ct  seq. 

Ali  Kiongwe.    See  Kiongwe,  Ali. 
Allegro,  Colonel  Joseph,  61,  65,  323. 
Allen,  George,  171  et  scq. 
Allman,  Dr.  Robert,  155. 
Ally  Sloper,  203. 
Aloes,  248. 
Alpine  flowers,  227. 
Alsace-Lorraine,  411,  420,  428,  430. 


Alston,  Lieut.  Edward,  333. 

Alston,  Sir  Francis,  112,  114. 

Alton,  209. 

Ambas  Ba}',  148. 

American  Government  and  Cuba, 
400,  401. 

American  Johnstons,  3. 

American  soldiers,  Author's  experi- 
ence of,  457. 

Americans,  328,  435. 

Americans  at  Rochester,  370. 

Amerindians,  386,  406,  461. 

Amiens,  443. 

Amritsar,  294. 

Anderson,  the  Honble.  Lady,  381. 
Anderson,  Sir  Percy,  112,  113,  201, 

220,  257,  265,  310,  335,  348. 
Anderson,  Colonel  Rowland,  113. 
Anderson,  Willy  (married  author's 

cousin),  267. 
Andes,  the  405,  406. 
Andoni  people,  language,  190. 
Anglesey,  Island  of,  408. 
Anglo-German  colonial  ambitions, 

ISO,  152. 
Angola,  89,  91  et  seq.,  458. 
Angola,  fauna  of,  92,  477. 
Angoni  (Nyasaland),  364. 
Angoni  Zulus,  212,  241,  364. 
Ankole  country,  340,  347. 
Annandale,  Marquises,  Earls  of,  i,  2. 
Annette  Cramsie,  i,  7. 
Annie  N.,  16,  17. 
Annie  Roye,  29,  30. 
Antas,  d',  Senor,  214,  215. 
Anthropoid  Apes,  the  25,  421. 
Apolo  Kagwa  (Regent  of  Buganda). 

339- 

Apostles  of  C.  and  A.  Church,  11. 
Arab  Magic,  246. 
Arabian  Nights,  146,  292. 
Arabic  Language,  118,  119,  320. 
Arabs  in  Nyasaland,  242  ct  scq.,  276, 
278,  304. 

Arabs  of  North  Nyasaland,  210- 

212,  248,  291,  298  et  seq. 
Archseopteryx,  412. 
Ark,  Noah's,  465. 
Armstrong,  General  S.  C,  386. 
Arnold,  Sir  Edwin,  102,  141,  146. 


483 


484 


THE  STORY 


OF  MY  LIFE 


Ar6,  190. 

Aroids,  341. 

Arundel,  379,  381,  437,  471. 
Ascension  Day,  260. 
Ascension  Island,  263. 
Ashley  Gardens,  142. 
Asia,  464. 
Asia  Minor,  418. 
Asibon,  Edem,  Chief,  192. 
Askar,  Hajji,  305. 
Asses,  249. 
Assiut,  120,  121. 
Astronomy,  460,  464. 
Atam,  193,  ig6. 
Atlanta,  U.  S.  A.,  390. 
Atonga,  people,  language,  240,  241, 
302,  303. 

Aubert,  Mons.  and  Mme.,  319,  329. 

Aures  mountains,  62. 

Austria,  411,  429,  430. 

Author  :  date  of  birth,  i ;  attack  of 
measles,  9;  love  of  peacocks,  9; 
first  school,  10;  early  interest  in 
French  and  Italian,  11;  first  visit 
to    Rochester,     13 ;    glimpse  of 

Charles    Dickens,    18;    and 

Nashenden,  13;   's  year's  rest 

from  school,  12,  20;   's  educa- 
tion at  Stockwell  Grammar  School, 
22 ;  executes  drawings  for  Sir  Eras- 
mus Wilson,  25 ;  becomes  student 
at  Royal  Academy  of  Arts,  Lon- 
don, and  at  King's  College,  30; 
works  in  Prosector's  Rooms,  Zoo- 
logical Gardens,  23 ;  and  at  Royal 
College  of  Surgeons,  24;  travels  in 
Spain,  30,  32,  33;  draws  in  the  Life 
classes,  Royal  Academy,  34,  35 ;  in- 
terview with  (Lord)  Leighton,  R. 

A.  (1878),  35;   's  mother  dies, 

36;  goes  to  Avignon  to  paint 
(1878),  36;  visits  Switzerland,  36; 

  and  the  first  Earl  Dudley,  39- 

41;  stay  in  Tunis  (1879-80),  48 
et  seq. ;  commences  picture,  "Door- 
way of  the  Mosque,"  53  et  seq.; 
stays  in  mountain  camp,  Algeria- 
Tunis  Borderland,  60  et  seq. ;  's 

illness    in    Tunis,    72;  language 

studies,  72;   's  interest  in  the 

African  Question  aroused  (1880), 
73;  paints  landscapes  in  France, 
77;  and  visits  Vervant,  77  et  seq.; 

 's   religious   faith   (1881),  77, 

78;    decides  to  join  Earl  of 

Mayo  in  African  exploration,  81 ; 
commences   study  of  Bantu  lan- 


guages, 83  ;  reaches  the  Shela  Moun- 
tains, 88;  — — -  and  the  Portuguese, 
88,  91 ;  shoots  big  game  in  Kunene 

basin,  91 ;    reaches  mouth  of 

Congo,  94;  lands  at  Kisanji,  96; 
Congo  journey  of   eight  months, 

99  et  seq. ;   's  three  Zanzibaris 

on    Congo,    loi ;   's  journey 

home  through  Portuguese  West 
Africa,  102  et  seq. ;  lands  at  Lisbon 
in  1883,  and  proceeds  to  Brussels, 
107,  108;  decides  to  qualify  for 
Consular  service,  no;  suggested  by 
Lord  Granville  for  work  in  Egypt, 

118;   's  travels  through  Egypt 

(1884),    120;   's    articles  on 

Egypt  in  Graphic,  121  ct  seq. ;  re- 
turns from  East  Africa  and  enters 
Consular  service,  139,  140;  makes 
Sir  Richard  Burton's  acquaintance, 
146;  leaves  for  the  Oil  Rivers  and 
the  Cameroons,  October  (1885), 
147 ;   's  first  attack  of  Black- 
water  fever,  154;   's  house  on 

Mondole  Island,  159  et  seq.;   's 

journeys  in  Cameroons,  164  et  seq.; 
explores  Cameroons  Mountain, 
165 ;  ascends  highest  point,  Cam- 
eroons Mountain,  167 ;   's  treat- 
ment by  German  authorities  in 
Cameroons,  170  et  seq.;  surveys 
Cross  River  and  Rio  del  Rey,  174; 
becomes  Acting-Consul  for  Niger 
Delta,  176;  tackles  question  of  Ja- 
ja  and  "middle-men,"  177  et  seq.; 
deports  Jaja  to  Gold  Coast  181 ; 
explores  Cameroons-Cross  River 
borderland,  193  et  seq. ;  visits  rivers 
of  Niger  Delta  and  Benin,  196; 
received  by  Nana,  Viceroy  of  King 
of  Benin,  197;  returns  to  England 
(1888),  201;  visits  Lord  Salisbury 
at  Hatfield,  202  et  seq. ;  desires  to 
serve  again  in  Nigeria,  but  is  sent 
instead  to  Nyasaland,  210  et  seq. ; 
stays  at  Liss,  209;  first  novel,  213; 

 's    journey    to    Lisbon,  215; 

meets  Cecil  Rhodes  in  London, 
217-220;  sent  to  see  Mr.  Joseph 
Chamberlain,  223 ;  visits  Sir  Percy 
Anderson  at  Hedsor  (1889),  224; 
proceeds  to  Moqambique  and  Nya- 
saland via  North  Italy,  226  et  seq. ; 
stops  in  Elephant  Marsh  and  meets 
(Sir)  Alfred  Sharpe.  237;  rides 
from  Katunga  to  Blantyre,  239; 
visits  Jumbe  at  Kotakota,  242  et 


INDEX 


485 


scq. ;  invents  the  Nyasaland  colors, 
243;  concludes  Agreement  with 
Jumbe,  243 ;  proceeds  Karonga, 
247;  makes  terms  with  Arabs,  248; 
visits  Tanganyika,  251  et  seq.;  re- 
turns to  Mo(;ambique,  257 ;  pro- 
ceeds Cape  Colony  to  communi- 
cate results  of  journey  to  Cecil 
Rhodes,  260,  261 ;  returns  to  Eng- 
land (1890),  263;   and  Palmis- 
try, 262,  263 ;  receives  Companion- 
ship of  Bath,  265 ;  attends  Stanley's 
wedding,  266;  writes  Life  of  Liv- 
ingstone, 267 ;  residence  at  Zomba, 
271 ;  commences  campaigns  against 
slave  traders  on  Lake  Nyasa,  275 
ct  seq. ;  visits  Rhodes  at  Ronde- 
bosch  (1893),  281 ;  returns  to  Eng- 
land (1894),  and  produces  Blue 
Book  on  Nyasaland,  286;  orders 
fire-engine  for  Nyasaland  to  please 
Mrs.  Earle,  290;  visits  Sir  Herbert 
Kitchener  in  Cairo,  291 ;  and  Vice- 
roy of  India  at  Calcutta,  292 ; 
journey  through  India,  293  et  seq.; 

 's  opinion   of   British  Indian 

Staff  Corps  officers,  297;  engages 
in  final  military  operations  in 
North  Nyasaland,  299;  falls  ill  of 
Black-water  fever,  304;  receives  K. 

C.  B.,  304,  305 ;   's  eldest  sister, 

305 ;   's  last  days  at  Zomba, 

305 ;   's    father's   death,   305 ; 

goes  to  Windsor  to  see  Queen  Vic- 
toria, 306;  marries  Honble.  Wini- 
fred Irby,  310;   's  stay  in  Rome 

(November,  1896),  311;  oiTered 
Consulate-General,  Norway,  313; 
proposed  for  High  Commissioner- 
ship  at  the  Cape  of  Good  Hope, 
313 ;  writes  book  on  British  Cen- 
tral Africa,  314;  accepts  Consul- 
ate-General, Tunis,  315;  witnesses 
second  Jubilee  in  London  (1897), 
315;  starts  for  Tunis,  316;  his  pic- 
ture of  crocodiles  and  water-birds 

(Royal  Academy,  1898),  316;  's 

journey  to  the  Tunisian  Sahara 
and  to  Tripoli,  320-323 ;  offered 
Special  Commissionership,  Ugan- 
da, 334;  reaches  Uganda,  339;   

and  Sir  Clement  Hill,  348;  con- 
cludes Uganda  Special  Commis- 
sion, 350;   retires   from  Consular 

service,  353 ;   's  pension,  355  ; 

receives  Hon.  degree  Doctor  of 
Science  from  Cambridge  Univer- 


sity, 359;  attends  Coronation  Ser- 
vice in  Westminster  Abbey  (1902), 
360;  pays  five  visits  to  Ireland, 
361;  has  trouble  with  eyesight,  360; 
becomes  President  of  African  So- 
ciety, 366;  stands  as  Parliamentary 
candidate  for  Rochester,  369;  Do. 
for  West  Marylebonc,  371 ;  visits 
Liberia  (1904-5-7),  374,  377;  pro- 
ceeds United  States  (1908-9)  and 
West  Indies,  384,  403 ;  visits  Birm- 
ingham, Alabama,  396;  returns 
from  South  American,  408;  writes 
The  Negro  in  tlie  New  World, 

408;   's  North  African  journey 

(1911),  409;  falls  ill  (1911),  424; 
visits  Germany  (191 1-2-3),  424; 
  and  eye-trouble,  423,  424;  at- 
tends Coronation  (1911),  424;  takes 
cure  at  Vittel  (1911,  1912),  424,  427  ; 
revisits  United  States  (1914)  431, 
434 ;  returns  to  England,  437 ;  pro- 
ceeds to  France  (1915),  439;  joins 
Fifth  Army  in  France  as  lecturer, 
443 ;  "gassed"  at  Chauny,  447 ;  in 
hospital    at    Abbeville,  448-450; 

  and  Mr.  H.  G.  Wells,  451; 

 's  treatment  by  French  sol- 
diers in  occupied  Germany,  457 ; 

 's    views    on    Religion,    460 ; 

 's    definition    of  Christianity, 

461 ;  his  interest  in  his  Sussex 
garden,  468;  dislike  of  Gypsies, 
471. 

Author,  Miss  (the  Author's  great- 
grandmother),  2. 
Avignon,  36. 

Avis,  Miss  Florence,  428,  441. 

Baboons,  249,  333. 

Backward  Peoples,  etc.,  the,  479. 

Baganda,  the,  340. 

Bahr-al-Ghazal,  106,  343. 

Baker,  Sir  Samuel,  338. 

Bakonjo  porters,  345. 

Bakush,  Genera!  (Foreign  Minister, 

Tunis),  64,  65. 
Bakwire  people,  language,  the,  149, 

159,  166. 
Balearic  Islands,  30  et  seq. 
Balfour,  Arthur  (Earl  of  Balfour), 

204,  362. 
Balfour,  Commander,  234,  235. 
Ballet  dance  by  Nana's  women,  198. 
Baluch  people  (Indian  Empire),  253. 
Baluchistan,  119. 
Bambute  pygmies,  345. 


486 


THE  STORY 


OF  MY  LIFE 


Banana,  the  169,  402. 

Banana  Point  (River  Congo),  92 

et  scq.,  95. 
Bananas,  wild,  341. 
Bandawe  (Lake  Nyasa),  240,  241. 
Bandawe,  Sergeant-Major,  302. 
Bangwenlu,  Lake,  261. 
Bantu  Languages,  the  83,  90,  147, 

200,  252,  334,  339,  343,  413,  414, 

419,  427,  428,  438,  441. 
Bantu  languages  of  the  Elgon  dis- 
trict, 349. 
Baobab  Trees,  99,  107. 
Baphia  nitida,  172. 
Baptist  Mission  of  Great  Britain, 

the,  99,  100,  148. 
Baptist  Missionaries  in  Africa,  103, 

148,  151,  152. 
Baptist  Missionaries  on  Congo,  99, 

100,  109. 

Baptists  of  United  States,  465. 
Barbary  Ape,  the  (Macacus  inuus), 
63. 

Barber,  Diana,  9. 
Barber,  Mr.,  432. 
Barberton,  Ohio,  432. 
Barbets  (birds),  99. 
Barcelona,  31. 

Barclay,   Arthur,   President   of  Li- 
beria, 374,  378. 
Baring  (sec  Earl  Cromer),  118. 
Baringo,  Lake,  349. 
Barotseland,  479. 
Barrie,  Sir  James,  289. 
Barrington,  Sir  Eric,  313,  353. 
Barros-Gomcz,  Sefior,  214,  215. 
Bartlett,  Clarence,  356. 
Basa,  371,  374. 
Basoga,  the,  340. 
Basuto  ponies,  284. 
Bates,  Henry  Walter,  116,  119,  146. 
Bavaria,  421. 
Bayou,  a,  392. 

Beast  of  the  Revelation,  the,  6. 
Beddard,  Mr.  F.  E.,  79. 
Bedford,  Duke  of,  356,  337. 
Beecroft,  Consul  John,  193. 
Beef,  292. 
Beer,  3. 

Belcher,  Consul,  242. 

Belcher,  R.  A.,  John,  35. 

Belfast,  I,  363. 

Belgians  in  Africa,  338. 

Belgians,  King  of  the  (Leopold  IL), 

05,  108  ct  scq.,  116. 
Belgium,  30,  107,  108. 
Belhaven,  Lord,  112. 


Bell,  Beba,  158. 

Bell,  King,  of  Cameroons,  149. 

Bell,  Mr.  Moberlcy,  360,  383. 

Bclloc,  Mr.  Ililaire,  318. 

Belloc,  Mrs.,  318. 

Belloc-Lowndes,  Mrs.,  318. 

Belsey,  Mr.,  15. 

Bende,  176,  190. 

Benguela,  84,  85. 

Benin,  196,  197. 

Bentley,  Revd.  Holman,  102. 

Berber  languages,  322. 

Berber  peoples,  60,  71,  320. 

Berlin,  265,  418. 

Berlin  Agreement  (1890),  265. 

Berndt,  Captain,  299. 

Bernhardt,  Mme.  Sara,  360. 

Bertie  of  Thame,  Viscount  (Honble. 

Sir  Francis  Bertie),  112,  113,  438. 
Bertie  of  Thame,  Viscountess,  440. 
Bey,  Beylik  of  Tunis,  49,  57,  64. 
Bible,  the,  4,  158,  464. 
Bicycling,  209,  310,  315,  378,  451. 
Big  game,  80,  91,  92,  350. 
Bignasco,  226,  227. 
Binger,  Colonel  Louis,  376. 
Bini  or  Benin  people,  language,  196, 

197. 

Bird  collections  in  the  United  States, 
432.  _ 

Birds  in  Achill  Island,  362. 
Birds  in  the  Cameroons,  172. 
Birds  in  the  Lower  Congo,  97,  99. 
Birds  of  Stuttgart  Museum,  414. 
Birds  on  Tanganyika,  253,  255. 
Birmingham,  i,  2. 
Birmingham,  Alabama,  396  ct  scq. 
Biscuits,  mixed,  109. 
Bismarck,  Prince,  135,  151,  257. 
Bison,  421. 
Rizerta,  82,  332. 
Black  Forest,  421. 

Black  Man's  Pari  in  the  War,  The 
478.. 

Blackie  and  Son.,  Messrs.,  479. 

Black-water  Fever  (Haemoglobin- 
uric,  Hssmaturic),  155-6,  200,  284, 
304,  341,  360. 

Black,  white  and  yellow,  243. 

Blantyre  (Nyasaland),  235  et  seq.,  275. 

Blantyre  (in  Scotland),  267- 

Blcek,  W.  H.  L,  83,  I47- 

Bloeme,  A.  de,  94,  95. 

Blood  pressure,  423. 

Bluebells  in  Sussex,  472. 

Blue  Book  on  British  Central  Africa 
(1894),  286. 


INDEX 


487 


Blundens  of  Poling,  the,  380. 
Blunt,  Wilfrid,  59- 
Bobbs-Mcrrill  Company,  479. 
Bocarro,  Jaspar,  210. 
Boers,  the,  223,  284,  314,  365. 
Boers,  Trek,  80,  88  ct  scq.,  91. 
Bognor,  474. 

Bolama   (Portuguese  Guinea),  102, 
los. 

"Boltons,  The,"  34. 

Bombay,  292,  296. 

Bone  (Algeria),  56,  61,  62. 

Bongo,  Tragelaph,  the,  168,  350. 

Boni,  Wa-,  tribe,  134. 

Bonn,  458. 

Bonny,  King  of  (George  Pepple), 
180,  181. 

Bonny  (Niger  Delta),  84,  147,  180, 
184. 

Books,  Sir  H.  H.  Johnston's,  477, 
479- 

Bordeaux,  3,  77. 
Bosnia-Herzegovina,  411. 
Boston,  Lady  (Honble.  Lady  Ander- 
son), 114,  225. 
Boston,  Lady  (Cecilia),  470. 
Boston,  Lord,  113,  224. 
Botany,  391. 

Bottomley,  Horatio,  143,  144. 
Boulogne,  441,  442,  450. 
Bourke,  Algernon,  82. 
Bourke,  Terence,  81,  82. 
Bournemouth,  73,  310. 
Boutonne  River,  75  et  seq. 
Boyce,  Dr.  Sorabji,  279. 
Bradshaw  (Railway  Guide),  138. 
Braham,  Mr.  Frank,  374. 
Brand's  Essence  of  beef,  156. 
Brass  plates  engraved  by  Calabar 

people,  193. 
Brass  River  (Niger  Delta),  185 

et  seq. 

Brazil,  Brazilians,  104,  107,  394. 

Brecknockshire,  19. 

Bright,  Jacob,  116. 

Brighton,  8,  113,  316,  470,  473. 

Bright's  Disease,  408,  424. 

Brindisi,  128,  133. 

British  Association,  the,  lio,  116,  134. 
British  Central  Africa  (Nyasaland 

and  northern  Zambezia),  243,  244, 

251,  259,  280,  282,  286. 
British  Central  Africa,  286,  314. 
British  Consulate-General  Alarsa,  324. 
British  East  Africa  Protectorate,  340. 
British  Embassy  at  Washington,  385, 

386. 


British  Indian  Staff  Corps  Officers, 
297. 

British  India  Steam  Navigation  Com- 
pany, 128,  137,  224,  296. 

British  Mammals,  478. 

British  Aluseum,  20,  356. 

British  Museum  Library,  45,  83. 

British  soldier  in  France,  443  et  seq. 

British  South  Africa  Chartered  Com- 
pany, 139,  283,  370. 

British  steamers,  33,  296,  384. 

British  traders  in  West  Africa,  172. 

British  of  the  West  Indies,  403. 

Brixton,  9,  11. 

Broadley,  Alexander  Meyrick,  58,  63. 

Bronchitis,  449. 

Brook  Kerith,  The,  463. 

Brookes,  the  Brookes  Family,  2. 

Bruce,   Mr.  and   Mrs.  Livingstone 

(Livingstone's  daughter  Agnes), 

267,  268. 
Brunker,  the  Misses,  13. 
Brussels,  107  et  seq.,  310. 
Bryant  and  May's  matches,  432. 
Bryce  Viscount,  383,  389. 
Bryce  Viscountess,  386. 
Buchanan  Brothers,  the,  271. 
Buchanan,  Vice-Consul  John,  211,  286. 
Buckingham  Palace,  315. 
Buckinghamshire,  432. 
Buea,  Cameroons,  159,  169. 
Buffalo,  63,  247,  294,  296,  297,  410. 
Buffalo,  Indian,  294,  296,  297. 
Buffalo,  town  of.  United  States,  434. 
Buggy,  the  American,  392. 
"Bula  Matadi,"  loi. 
Burdett-Coutts,  Baroness,  41,  139,  266. 
Burlmgton  House,  141,  451. 
Burton,  Lady,  141. 

Burton,  Sir  Richard,  141,  145-7,  167, 

337- 
Busoga,  349. 

Butcher,  Dean  ("Bishop  of  Cairo"), 
127. 

Biittikofer,  Professor,  374,  378. 
Buxton,  the  Earl,  368. 

Cabinda,  102. 
Cacao,  103. 

Cacti,  distribution  of  the,  164,  463. 
Cacti,  in  Palestine  (prickly  pear), 
463. 

Cadenabbia,  310,  311. 
Cairo,  118  et  seq.,  122,  291. 
Calabar,  New,  184,  185. 
Cal.\bar,  Old,  84,  154  et  seq.,  172  et 
seq.,  l8s,  190. 


488 


THE  STORY 


OF  MY  LIFE 


Calamus  Palms,  341. 
Calcutta,  8,  292. 

Camberwell,  Camberwell  Grove,  9,  10, 
35- 

Cambridge,  Boston  (U.  S.  A.),  38s. 
Cambridge,  H.  R.  H,  the  Duke  of, 
143-  . 

Cambridge,  University  of,  43,  44,  359. 
Cambridge  University  Press,  478. 
Cameroons,  85,  140,  148,  150,  184. 
Cameroons,  Bantu  languages  of  the, 
83,  150. 

Cameroons  Mountain,  summit  of  the, 
164-169. 

Cameroons  Mts.,  148,  159,  164,  165. 
Cameroons,  origin  of  the  name,  150, 
Cameroons,  tropical  forests  of,  164 
cf  seq. 

Cameron  Bay,  Tanganyika,  256. 

Campden  Hill,  Kensington,  287,  288. 

Canada,  434,  435. 

Canadian  Cardinals,  435. 

Canine  teeth  in  the  Giraffe  and  Oka- 

Pi.  347- 
Cannibals,  288. 

Canoe,  Yellow  Duke's  House,  174 

et  seq. 
Cantyre,  Mull  of,  137. 
"Cape  to  Cairo,"  the,  256. 
Cape  Colony,  260,  261,  281  ct  seq. 
Cape  Palmas,  371,  374. 
Cape  Town,  261,  281-2. 
Cape  Verde  Islands,  102,  106. 
Caracal  Lynx,  the,  260. 
Cardale,  the  Apostle,  12. 
Cardale,  Miss,  6. 
Cardi,  the  Count  de,  366,  367. 
Cardozo,  Senor,  232. 
Carisbrook,  8. 
Carlyle,  Mrs.,  5. 
Carnegie,  Mr.  Andrew,  394. 
Cartagena  (South  America),  405. 
Carver,  Professor  (Tuskegee),  391. 
Casanova,  Giacomo,  335. 
Catalan  language,  the,  31. 
Catholic  Apostolic  Chukch,  s,  6, 

II,  29,  35. 
Catholics,  Roman,  116. 
Cave  Bear  of  Germany,  421. 
Caves  and  cave  dwellings  of  Tunisia, 

321,  322. 
Cecil,  Lady  Gwendolen,  204. 
Cecil,  Lord  Hugh,  203,  204. 
Cedars,  234. 

Celorico  (Portuguese  trader),  91. 
Chaga  people,  the,  131. 
Chalmers  Mitchell,  Dr.  P.,  357. 


Chamberlain,  Rt.  Honble.  Austin,  375. 
Chamberlain,  Rt.  Honblk.  Joseph, 

10,  223,  313,  354,  370. 
Chamberlain,  Dr.  Leander,  385. 
riiampagne  (wine),  156. 
Champain,  Major,  146. 
Champion  Hill,  35,  36,  42,  73,  140. 
Chandolas  Angele,  37. 
Chapman,  James,  90. 
Chapman,  W.  J.  B.,  90,  92,  458. 
"Charity,"  460. 

Charles  Janson,  s.s.  (Universities' 
Mission  Steamer),  240,  242,  245-6, 
299. 

Chartreuse  liqueur,  244. 
Chateau  Laurier,  Ontario,  434. 
Chatto  and  Windus,  Messrs,  455,  479. 
Chauny,  446,  448. 
Chelsea,  73,  80. 

Chelsea  Hotel,  New  York,  385. 
Chertsey,  360. 

Chester  Terrace,  Regent's  Park, 
289,  3S6. 

Chevalier,  Professor  Auguste,  438, 

439-  . 
Chikusi,  270. 
Chilwa,  Lake,  271,  274. 
Chimpanzee  ("Consul"),  199. 
Chimpanzees,  24  et  seq.,  168,  194. 
Chinde,  Chinde  River  (mouth  of 

Zambezi),  230  et  seq.,  269,  284, 

297. 

Chiperone  Mountain,  234. 
Chiromo,  257,  270,  297,  298. 
Chloroform,  454. 
Choughs  in  Achill  Island,  362. 
Christian  Religion,  interest  in  the 

origin  of  the,  461,  462. 
Christianity,  461. 

Christianity,  Author's  definition  of, 

461-463;  revival  of,  4. 
Christie,  J.  E.,  141. 
Christmas  Day  at  Blantyre,  280. 
Church  Missionary  Society,  136,  185, 

338. 

Church  of  England  (Anglicans),  6, 

29,  127. 
Church  of  Scotland,  238. 
Church  of  Scotland  Mission,  21 1,  238, 

240,  275,  304. 
Churchill,  Consul,  W.  A.,  228. 
Churchill,  Lord  Randolph,  204,  213. 
Clarendon  Press,  the,  428,  441,  478. 
Clarke,   Mr.   Edward  (Foreign 

Office),  335. 
Classical  education,  abuse  of  the, 

393,  394- 


INDEX 


489 


Cleveland,  Ohio,  429,  432. 
Clievedon,  224. 

Clifton  Zoological  Gardens,  140. 

Coat  of  Anns  for  Britisli  Central 
Africa,  286. 

Cobham,  Chief  John  Boko,  192. 

Cobra,  the  Tree  (Dcndraspis),  161. 

Coconut  palms,  243. 

Coffee  of  Nyasaland,  286,  306. 

Cohen,  Consul  Augustus,  92,  102,  iii. 

Coire  (Switzerland),  290. 

Coles,  Edward,  17. 

Coles,  John,  117. 

Cologne,  412,  420. 

Colombia,  228. 

Colon,  403,  404. 

Colonial  Office,  214,  402. 

Colors  of  Nyasaland,  243. 

Colquhoun,  Archibald  (Administra- 
tor of  Rhodesia),  261. 

Columbia  University,  395. 

Comber,  Revd.  Percy,  102. 

Comte  d'Etudes  du  Haut  Congo,  94 
ct  seq.,  100,  108. 

Common  Sense  in  Foreign  Policy, 
478. 

Commons,  House  of,  429. 
Comparative  Study  of  the  Bantu 

AND  Semi-Bantu  Languages,  149, 

252,  354,  441,  458,  479. 
Compton,  the  Lady  Alwyne,  335. 
Comte,  Auguste,  142,  143. 
Congo  Forest,  the,  343  et  seq. 
Congo  Free  State,  343. 
Congo  Question,  95,  96. 
Congo  River,  95  et  seq.,  loi  et  seq., 

115- 

Connaught,  H.  R.  H.  the  Duke  of, 

306,  434. 
Constantinople,  41. 
Consular  Service,  45,  110,  iii. 
Contrexeville,  424,  425. 
Cook,  Mr.  John,  133. 
Cook,  Messrs,  Thomas,  133. 
Coptic  Church,  the,  128. 
Copts,  the,  123,  124,  128. 
Cordoba,  33. 

Cornhill  Magazine,  the,  453. 
Coronation  Service  (1902),  360. 
Coronation  Service  (1911),  429. 
Corrugated  Iron,  272,  315,  407,  473. 
Cotterill,  H.  B.  (African  Explorer), 
211. 

Coutinho,  Lieut.,  236,  256. 
Cowley,  Earl  of,  440. 
Cowley  Road,  9,  10. 
Cramsies,  the,  i. 


Cranbornc,  Viscount  (present  Mar- 
(luis  of  Salisbury),  202,  203,  3553. 

Craters  of  the  Cameroons,  166,  167. 

Crawfurd,  Mrs.,  145,  216. 

Crawfurd,  Oswald,  141,  144-6,  2x6, 
217. 

Crawshay,  Colonel  Richard,  246,  248. 

Crocodiles,  96,  247. 

Cromer,  first  Earl  of,   (Sir  Evelyn 

Baring),  118  et  seq.,  292,  350,  365. 
Crommelin,  Mijnheer  J.  P.  (Dutch 

diplomatist),  378. 
Cross,  Dr.  Kerr,  248. 
Ckoss  River,  174,  183,  190,  191,  193 

et  seq.,  213. 
Crowned  Cranes,  254,  272. 
Crowther,  Archdeacon,  185. 
Cuba,  400  et  seq. 
Cufic  Mss.,  53. 

Cumming,  Walter  Gordon,  301. 
Cunningham,  Mr.  J.  P.,  335. 
Cure  of  Vervant,  the,  78. 
Currie,  Sir  Philip  (Lord  Currie), 

114,  217. 
Cust,  Harry,  451. 

Cust,  Robert  Needham,  185. 

Daffodils  in  Sussex,  470. 
Dahome,  85,  104. 
Dahomey,  In,  396. 
Daily  Grafihic,  411. 
Daily  Mail,  the,  369. 
Dalhousie  health  resort,  Himalayas, 
295- 

Dane,  Sir  Louis,  296. 
Darwin,  Charles,  10,  i^,  44. 
Davis,  R.  A.,  H.  W.  B.,  35. 
Davis,  Llewellyn,  289. 
Dawkins,  Clinton,  213. 
Decken,  Baron  von  der,  135. 
Deer,  362. 

Deity,  belief  in  a,  460. 

Delagoa  Bay  (Lourengo  Marques), 

115,  229,  284. 
Delcasse,  Mons.,  333. 
Delhi,  293. 
Denmark  Hill,  9. 

Dentist  of  the  Desert,  the,  323. 

Derby,  the  fifteenth  Earl  of,  217. 

Deys  of  Tunis,  57. 

Dickens,  Charles,  13,  18,  453. 

Dickins  and  Jones,  40. 

Dilke,  Sir  Charles,  in,  115,  360. 

Dinduna,  the  baboon,  333. 

Diosy,  Arthur,  441,  442. 

Divinity,  ascription  of,  461. 

Doggett,  Walter,  345,  359. 


490 


THE  STORY 


OF  MY  LIFE 


Dogs  in  Egypt,  126  et  scq. 

Dolmetsch,  Mrs.,  383. 

Dombasi,  304. 

Dombcy  and  Son,  453. 

Domira,  s.  s.,  278,  299. 

Dorsetshire,  369. 

Downs  of  Sussex,  472,  473. 

Dracwna  trees,  107. 

Drake,  Sir  Francis,  406,  431. 

Drummond,  Henry  (founder  of 
Catiiolic   Apostolic   Church),  4 
et  scq.,  7,  12. 

Drummond,  Mrs.,  141,  142. 

Drummond,  Consul  Eric,  373. 

Drunkenness  in  the  Near  East,  468. 

Drunkenness  in  South  Africa,  283. 

Duala  people,  language,  the,  149  et 
seq.,  172,  174. 

Duala   (Somali  attendant  on  Stan- 
ley), 129. 

Dublin,  I,  361,  364. 

Ducks,  254. 

Dudley,  Countess,  40. 

Dudley,  first  Earl,  39-42. 

Dudley  Gallery,  37,  61,  77. 

Dugort,  Achill  Island,  363. 

Duke  Ephraim,  King  (Old  Calabar), 
191. 

Du  Maurier,  the  late  George,  2S7, 

288,  466. 
Du  Maurier,  Sir  Gerald,  289. 
Du  Marier,  Sylvia  (Mrs.  Llewellyn 

Davis),  289. 
Dumfries,  Dumfriesshire,  3,  37. 
Dunlop  Company,  the,  375. 
Dunstan,  Professor,  Wyndham,  369. 
Duparquet,  Father,  91. 
Durban,  284. 

Dutch  explorers,  149,  378. 
Dutch  factories  on  Congo,  94  ct  scq., 
100. 

Dwcru,  Lake,  341. 
Dwirat  (Tunisia),  322,  323. 
Dyeball  missionary  family  of  Old 
Calabar,  162. 

E.  ,  Mrs.,  328  et  seq.,  330,  331. 

Eagles,  255. 
Earle,  Mrs.,  287,  290. 
Earle,  Sir  Lionel,  290. 
Earth,  the.,  465. 

Eastgate  House  (Rochester),  13. 
East  Africa,  136  ei  seq.,  478. 
Easter  Time  at  Bonnv  (1882),  187. 
Easton  Glebe  (H.  G.  Wells),  451,  4.S2. 
East  Indian  settlers  in  West  Indies, 
403- 


Edgerleys,  the,  100. 

Edinburgh,  8,  207. 

Edward  vii.,  King,  350,  353. 

Edward,  Lake,  345. 

Edwards,  Lieut. -Colon el  C.  A.,  285, 

292,  297,  298,  300,  304. 
Edwin  Drood,  13,  15,  18. 
Efik  people,  language,  174,  i8g,  191. 
Egerton,  Sir  A.,  128. 
Egville,  Sir  Howard  d',  368. 
Egypt,  46,  59,  1 18  Ct  seq.,  297. 
Eland,  the  Gigantic,  106. 
Elephant,  Marsh,  the,  236. 
Elephantiasis,  245. 
Elephants,  63,  194,  293,  344,  410. 
Elgon,  Mt.,  349. 
filias.  General  Mussali,  57,  65. 
filias,  Madame,  57,  65. 
Eliot,  Dr.  Charles,  385. 
filisa,  Madame,  51. 
Elizabeth  L.,  13,  14. 
Elizabeth,  Queen,  380. 
Elton,  Consul  James,  211. 
Ely,  the  late  Bishop  of  (Lord  Alwyne 

Compton),  335,  359.  _ 
Encyclopaedia  Britannica,  28,  59,  144, 

467. 
Enfield,  2. 
Engadine,  the,  290. 
English,  412,  414. 
Ensley,  (Alabama),  400. 
Entebbe,  341,  345,  347,  349. 
Eoanthropos,  47-|. 
Equatorial  East  Africa,  no,  135- 

137- 

Erie,  Lake,  432. 

Eriksson,  Mr.   (Swedish  officer  on 

Congo),  346,  347. 
Euan-Smith,  Sir  Charles,  227. 
Eugenie,  Empress,  440. 
Eyamba,  Joseph,  194. 
Eye  trouble,  423. 
Eyo,  King  of  Creek  Town,  191. 

Fairfield,  Edward  (Colonial  Office), 

141,  146. 
Fairplace  farm  (Sussex),  379. 
Fashoda,  331,  332. 

Fathee^  Author's,  first  marriage,  I ; 
goes  to  hear  Edward  Irving,  5 ; 
Secretary  to  Royal  Insurance  Com- 
pany, 11;  his  interest  in  Catholic 
Apostolic  Church,  11;  his  travels 
about  the  world,  30,  35,  42;  be- 
comes a  Fellow  of  the  Royal  Geo- 
graphical Society,  11;  introduces 
author  to  Consul-General,  Tunis, 


INDEX 


491 


54;  love  of  theatricals,  73;  sup- 
ports project  of  African  explora- 
tion, 81  ;  retires  from  service  of 
Royal  Insurance  Company,  140; 
death  of,  305. 

Fellowes,  Florence  (Florence  Ander- 
son), 113. 

Fernando  Poo,  83,  154,  160,  165. 

Ferns  in  Jamaica,  403. 

Fetish  animals  in  the  Niger  Delta, 
186-188. 

Fife  (Nyasa-Tanganyika  Plateau), 
249. 

Fifth  Army  in  France,  443  ct  scq., 
446. 

Fish-eagles,  255. 
Fisher,  S.  Melton,  R.  A.,  141. 
Fitzmaurice,  Lord,  112,  114. 
Flad,  lievd.  Mr.,  319,  325. 
Flamingoes,  254,  432. 
Fleas,  125,  127,  295,  362. 
Florida,  392,  400. 
Flower  family,  the,  7,  24. 
Flower,  Sir  William,  24,  25. 
Floyer,  Ernest  Ayscough,  119. 
Floyer,  Miss  (Mrs.  Butcher),  iig, 
128. 

Foote,  R.  N.,  Capt.  (Consul),  211, 
231. 

Forties,  Stanhope  (Royal  Academi- 
cian), 141,  381. 

Forbes,  William  Alexander,  44,  79, 
81. 

Forbes,  Sir  William,  381. 
Forcados   River,   Niger   Delta,  188, 
196. 

Ford,  Sir  Clare,  145,  201,  216,  311. 
Ford,  Richard  (Guide  Book  to 

Spain),  145,  216. 
Foreign  Office,  the,  110-116,  133, 

I34i  136,  200,  202,  222-3,  232,  238, 

286,  353-4,  370,  373,  377,  383-  412, 

430. 

Forests,  Tropical,  341,  392. 
Fort  Johnston,  276  et  seq. 
Fortniglitly  Review,  the,  209,  217. 
Fotheringham,  Monteith,  211,  247. 
Fraas,  Professor  (Wiirttemberg), 
415- 

Fraipont,  Mons.  Jules  (Brussels), 
359- 

France  and  Britain,  relations  be- 
tween, 331,  332. 

France  and  Germany  in  191 1,  420, 
426. 

Fraser,  Aliss  Helen,  138. 
Fredley  (Box  Hill),  141. 


Freemasonry,  58. 

Free  Trade  in  Great  Britain,  370. 
Free  Trade  in  the  Niger  Delta,  178, 

200. 
Frejus,  440. 

French  ambitions,  73,  135,  149,  338, 
383. 

French  aristocracy,  the,  75,  78. 

French  Catholics  (Land  mission- 
aries), 77,  78,  91,  144,  164,  338,  348, 
435- 

French  Colonial  Office,  the,  338,  376. 

French  Foreign  Office,  the,  376,  377. 

French  in  Germany,  457. 

French  Language,  the,  id,  ii,  20, 
72,  100,  118,  401-2. 

French  officers  in  Algeria,  61,  62. 

French  Protectorate  over  Tunis,  56, 
57,  59,  61,  331,  332. 

French-speaking  Canada,  435. 

French  and  Tunis,  the,  48,  317,  331. 

Freshfield,  Mr.  Douglas,  226,  287. 

Freshfield,  Airs.  Douglas,  226,  287 
et  seq.,  310. 

Freyer,  Sir  Peter,  454,  455. 

Frissell,  Dr.  H.  B.  (Hampton  Insti- 
tute), 387,  393. 

Fuchsias,  401. 

Ful,  Fulbe,  Fula  people  and  language, 

105,  183. 
Fulas  in  Nigeria, 
Fuller,  Rev.  J.  J.,  151. 
Furniture  in  Germany,  412. 

Gabes  (Tunisia),  323. 
Gaboon,  the,  149. 
Gafsa  (Tunisia),  323. 
Gala  people,  language,  134. 
Galago  lemurs,  99. 

Gallery  of  Heroes  and  Heroines,  A, 
478._ 

Gambia  region,  440,  458. 

Ganne,  Mons.  Louis,  425. 

Garden,  the  Author's,  468  ct  seq. 

Gardiner,  Mrs.,  5,  20,  21. 

Gardiner,  S.  R.  (the  historian),  20. 

Garrod,  Professor  Alfred,  23  et  seq., 

42  et  seq.,  44. 
Gas  masks,  443,  447. 
Gasquet,  Cardinal,  380. 
Gaston,  Paris,  Grammar  of  the  Latin 

Tongues  (adapted  from  Diez),  21. 
Gaussin,  Mons.  (French  Diplomatic 

Service),  318. 
Gay-Dombeys,  the,  43,  141,  146,  147. 

202,  453  et  seq.,  479. 
Geese,  254,  273,  433. 


492 


THE  STORY 


OF  MY  LIFE 


Geographical  Society,  the  Royal  (see 

Royal  Geographical). 
Geology,  460,  464. 
Geometry,  22. 

George  GrcnfcU  and  the  Congo,  151, 

478.. 
Geraniums,  125. 

German  Colonial  Ambitions,  87,  95, 

96,  135,  150,  257,  383. 
German  Colonial  Society,  411. 
German  Congress  in  London  (1912), 

427. 

German  Emperor  (W'ilhelm  11.),  257, 
264. 

German  kidnapper  of  Pygmies,  344. 

German  language,  412,  434. 

German  Missionaries,  87. 

German  Protectorate  over  East  Afri- 
ca, 13s,  139- 

German  Reeds,  the  (entertainment), 
74- 

German  threats  and  amende  honor- 
able, 170. 

Germans  and  Cameroons,  the,  151, 

152,  170. 
Germans  and  Liberia,  275,  383. 
Germans,  first  treaty-making  in  West 

Africa,  87. 
Germans  on  Lake  Nyasa,  299. 
Germany  and  Africa,  95,  96,  184,  413, 

430. 

Germany,  southern,  421,  422,  457,  458. 
Gibbs,  Sir  Philip,  369. 
Gibraltar,  2,  55. 

Gilbert  and  Sullivan  Operas,  395. 
Gilmour,  Thomas  Lennox,  141. 
Giraffe,  Five-horned,  350,  358. 
Giraffes,  63,  251,  410. 
Gladstone,  Right  Honorable  W.  E., 

IS,  19,  149- 
Glasgow,  1,  2,  3,  5. 
"Glitters,"  423. 

Globe  newspaper,  50,  55,  60,  62. 
Goats  of  Achill  Island,  362. 
God,  461,  466. 
Goguel,  Mons.,  60. 
Gold  Coast  Colony,  180,  182. 
Goldie,  Sir  George  Taubman,  183. 
Geldsmid,  Sir  Frederick,  109. 
Goletta,  49,  57. 

Gomez,  Senor  Barros,  214,  215. 
Good  News,  s.  S  .(Tanganyika),  252, 
256. 

Goodwood  Races,  430. 

Gordon  Gumming,  Mr.  Walter,  300. 

Gorillas,  346. 

Gorse,  363. 


Goschen,  Right  Honorable  George, 
213. 

Goshawk,  H.  M.  S.,  179,  181. 
Gosse,  Mr.  Edmund,  308,  309. 
Gosse,  the  late  Philip  (naturalist), 

308,  309. 
Goulette,  La  (Goletta),  49. 
Granada,  33. 

Grandfather,  Author's,  i,  5,  6,  10. 

Grandmother  (Mary  Hamilton),  7,  9. 

Grando  (Kruman),  157. 

Grant,  J.  A.  (son  of  the  Nile  ex- 
plorer), 261. 

Grant,  Colonel  J.  F.  (Nile  explorer), 
337-. 

Granville,  the  Earl,  55,  114,  118. 
Graphic  Supplements,  121,  133. 
Graphic,  The,  54,  121,  122,  213,  312, 

314.  31S-  322,  330,  360,  361,  452. 
Gray,  parrot,  the,  95,  344. 
Gray,  parrots  at  Principe,  104. 
Great-grandfather,  Author's,  i. 
Great-great  grandfather.  Author's, 

1-3- 

Greaves,  Mr.  Arthur,  384,  387,  402, 

405,  421,  431,  437- 
Greek  language  and  history,  393,  394. 
Green,  Mrs.  j.  R.,  365,  366  et  seq. 
Greenville,  Alississippi,  400. 
Grenfell,  George  (Congo  explorer), 

100,  148,  151. 
Grenfell,  Mrs.  George,  100. 
Greshoff,  Mr.  (Dutch  agent,  Congo), 

100. 

Grey,  the  Earl  (Albert  Grey),  139,  287. 
Grey,  Sir  Edward  (Viscount  Grey  of 

Fallodon),  376,  411,  429. 
Gribbell,  Miss,  206,  207. 
Griset,  Earnest,  28. 
Grossmith,  George  (the  late),  141. 
Guernsey,  351. 
Guinea  fowl,  273. 

Guinea  fowl  on  Ascension  Island, 
263. 

Gunboats  on  Lake  Nyasa. 
Gurmukhi,  295. 

Gypohierax  (Fishing  vulture),  97. 
Gypsies,  315,  381,  470-474- 

Haddon-Smith,  Sir  George  B.,  377. 

Haematuria,  155,  200. 

Hagenbeck,  Carl,  412,  419. 

Hair  growth  on  human  body,  25,  26. 

Haiti,  401. 

Haitian  French,  401. 
Ham,  448. 
Hamburg,  419. 


INDEX 


493 


Hamilton,  relations  of  Author,  7  cl 

seq.  0,  24. 
Hampshire,  g. 

Hampton  Institute,  the,  386  cl  seq. 
Hanbury,  Major,  448. 
Hand,  R.  N.,  Captain,  179. 
Harconrt,  Sir  WiUiam,  82,  112,  459. 
Harley  Street,  408,  424,  455. 
Harris,  Mr.  Frank,  209,  218,  314,  453. 
Harris,  Dr.  Rutherfoord,  283. 
Harrison,  Messrs.  (Niger  Coast 

Traders),  181. 
Harvard  University,  385. 
Harwich,  420. 
Hastings,  474. 
Hatfield  House,  202,  350. 
Hatton  and  Cookson,  Messrs,  94,  186. 
Havana,  Habana,  400. 
Havre,  440. 

Hawes,  Consul,  271,  275. 
Health  troubles,  44,  360,  361. 
Heather,  363. 

Hedsor  (Buckinghamshire),  142, 
224. 

Hell  in  Alabama,  397. 
Henderson,  Revd.  Alexander 

(Church  of  Scotland  Mission) 

238. 

Henry  Johnston  (Author's  great- 
uncle),  9. 
Henry  VTii.,  307. 

Hensley  Henson,  Canon  (Bishof  of 

Durham),  203. 
Hepworth-Dixon,  Miss  Ella,  141, 

314- 

Herald,  H.  M.  S.,  270. 
Heralds'  Office,  286,  305. 
Herefordshire,  19. 
Hermann  von  Wissmann,  Colonel, 
299. 

Hermann  von  Wissman,  Steamer, 

299. 
Heme  Hill,  g. 
Herons,  255. 

Hertslet,  Sir  Edward,  112,  113. 
Hewett,  Consul  Edward  Hyde,  140, 

148,  149,  154,  170,  173,   176,  183, 

et  seq.,  198. 
Hill,  Sir  Clement,  114,  201,  347 

et  seq.,  350,  367. 
Hillel  (Jewish  writer),  462. 
Hima  race,  language,  the,  249,  342. 
Himalaya,  the,  295. 
History  of  a  Slave,  The,  213,  314, 

452,  477. 

History  of  the  Colonisation  of  Afri- 
ca, etc.,  478. 


History  and  description  of  the  Brit- 
ish Empire  in  Africa,  478. 

Hobley,  Mr.  C.  W.,  349. 

Holland  and  West  Africa,  94,  95. 

Holmes,  the  late  Mr,  (Librarian, 
Windsor  Castle),  307. 

Holt,  Messrs,  John,  95. 

Hook-worm  disease,  401. 

Hopkins,  Consul  (Nigeria),  187. 

Hornbills,  98. 

Horse-racing,  472. 

Hotel  de  I'Europe,  Avignon,  36. 

Hotel  Gibbon,  37. 

Houts  Bay  (Cape  Colony),  282. 

Human  ham,  a  smoked,  194. 

Humbe,  91. 

Humpata,  8g. 

Hungary,  421. 

Hunter,  John,  24. 

Hunt-Grubbe,  Admiral  Sir  Walter, 
182. 

Huntley  and  Palmer's  biscuits,  log. 
Hutchinson  and  Co.,  Messrs.,  151, 
478. 

Hutton,  Mr.  James,  of  Manchester, 

136. 
Hyenas,  410. 
Hylocharus  pig,  350. 

Iberian  types,  Ireland,  363,  387. 
Ibibio  tribe,  190. 
Ibis  (bird),  255. 

Ibo  people  of  Nigeria,  language,  the, 

176,  188  et  seq. 
Ibo  (Portuguese  East  Africa)  22g. 
"Iguanas,"  186. 

Ijo  people,  language,  the,  184. 

Ilala  (Nyasa  steamer),  244,  246,  299. 

Illegitimate  children  in  Africa,  atti- 
tude towards,  of  British,  Dutch, 
French  and  Portuguese,  95. 

Imperial  British  East  Africa  Co., 
136,  338. 

Imperial  Institute,  the,  368. 

Impero  e  Liberia,  478. 

India,  461. 

India,  Author's  visit  to,  292  el  seq., 
296. 

Indian  Empire,  468. 
Indians  in  Trinidad,  406,  407. 
International  Interference  in  Africa, 
etc.,  478. 

Irby,  Honble.  Winifred  (Honble. 

Lady  Johnston),  224,  310. 
Ireland,  264,  326,  360,  363,  et  seq., 

436. 

Irish  language,  the,  363. 


494 


THE  STORY 


OF  AIY  LIFE 


Irish  members,  House  of  Commons, 

202. 

Irish  people,  the,  363,  370. 

Irving,  Edward,  4  et  seq.,  12,  20. 

Isaac,  Mr.  F.  W.,  350. 

Isabella  11.  of  Spain  (Ysabel),  409. 

Islam,  4S,  461,  466  et  scq. 

Isle  of  Wight,  8,  17,  408. 

Ismail,  the  Khedive,  123. 

Isubu  people,  language,  the,  149. 

Italian  Sketches  (Zangwill),  4O3. 

Italy,  427. 

Itawa  (Tanganyika),  252,  256. 

Jacob  and  the  Angel,  27. 
Jago,  Consul-General,  320. 
Jaja  at  Accra,  181,  182. 
Jaja,  King  of  Opobo,  176  et  seq.,  200, 
202. 

Jajuars,  392,  406. 
Jamaica,  148,  402. 
James  11.,  307. 

James  Stevenson,  s.  s.  (African 
Lakes  Company  Steamer),  234 
et  seq.,  235  et  seq.,  257. 

Jameson  Raid,  304,  305. 

Jameson,  Sir  Starr,  261,  262,  283. 

Japan,  442. 

Java,  468. 

Jean  dAngely,  St.,  75. 
Jekri  people  (Niger  Delta),  197. 
Jelly  Fish,  407. 
Jerba,  Island  of,  46,  320. 
Jesus  and  the  Aissawia,  324,  325,  327. 
Jesus  Christ,  461-3. 
Jesus,  name  of,  461,  468. 
Jewish  quarter  of  Tunis,  52,  69  et 
seq. 

Jews,  the,  70,  71,  461,  462. 
Jews,  Spanish,  66. 

Jews  of  Tunis,  the,  66,  70,  71 ;  music 
of,  69;  cemetery  of,  71;  costume 
of,  70. 

Jews  of  the  West  Indies,  403. 
Jhansi  (India),  293,  294. 
Jinja  falls  (birth  of  Nile),  337. 
Jipe,  Lake,  133. 

Joao  dAjuda,  Sao  (Dahome),  104. 
John  of  Jerusalem,  Knights  of  St., 
379,  380. 

Johnson,  Emma,  Jaja,  176,  181,  372. 

Johnson,  Lionel,  142. 

Johnston,  Alex  (Author's  brother), 
36,  316,  451. 

Johnston,  Fort,  276  et  seq. 

Johnston,  George,  Author's  broth- 
er), 42. 


Johnston,  the  Honble.  Lady,  311, 
323,  324  et  seq.,  360,  379. 

Johnston,  J.  M.  C.  (Author's  broth- 
er), 37,  42,  75. 

Johnston,  Mr.  P.  M.  (Author's  broth- 
er), 379,  429- 

Johnston,  Revd.  S.  H.,  29. 

Johnston-Levis,  Dr.,  426. 

Johnstons,  the  clan  of  the,  3. 

Johnstons  of  the  Boredlais,  3,  79. 

Jones,  Dr.  Thomas  Jesse  (Hampton 
Institute),  387. 

Jones,  Revd.  David,  252. 

Jordan,  Mr.,  80,  90. 

Judaism,  69  et  seq. 

Jumbe  Kimemeta,  135. 

Jumbe,  Tawakali  Sudi,  of  Nyasa- 
land,  241  et  seq.,  246,  306,  307. 

Jumbe's  Commander-in-Cliief,  244. 

K.  C.  B.,  304. 

Kabarega,  King,  340. 

Kabunda,  253  et  seq. 

Kafue  River,  258. 

Kahe,  135. 

Kairwan,  46. 

Kampala,  339,  340. 

Karonga,  211,  240,  247,  299,  304. 

Kasagama,  342. 

Kashmir,  295. 

Katanga,  240,  258. 

Katunga  (Shire  River),  233,  235. 

Kawasji  Dinshah,  Messrs.  (Parsi 

agents),  129. 
Kay,  Mrs.  Joseph,  141,  142. 
Kegan  Paul,  Charles,  141-144. 
Kegan  Paul,  Trench,  Triibncr  and 

Co.,  143,  452,  477- 
Keiller,  Mr.,  279. 
Kelly,  Mr.,  87. 

Keltic,  Sir  John  Scott,  141,  146. 
Kennington,  I. 
Kensington,  2,  144. 
Kent,  9. 

Kenya,  210,  414. 
Kerr  Cross,  Dr.  248. 
Kew  Gardens,  200. 
Khaibar  Pass,  296. 
Khaireddin  Pasha,  49,  57. 
Khedive's  deserted  palace,  123. 
Khedives  of  Egypt,  123,  128. 
Khmirs  (Kroumirs),  the,  56,  60. 
Kibo,  132. 

Kibosho  people,  117,  132. 
Kilimanjaro,  no,  130,  131,  210. 
KiLiMANj.\RO  Expedition,  the,  iio, 
III,  114,  130  et  seq. 


IND1<:X 


495 


Kilimanjaro,  Expedition,  the,  130, 

134,  477-. 
Kimawcnzi,  132. 
Kimbcrlcy,  260,  261. 
Kimbcrloy,  Earl  of,  287. 
King's  College  (Strand),  21,  23. 
Kingfishers,  97,  254. 
Kingslcy,  Charles,  12. 
Kingsley,  Miss  Alary,  364  ct  scq. 
Kingston  (capital  of  Jamaica),  402, 

403. 
Kinshasa,  102. 

KiONGVVE,  Ali,  232,  242,  245,  247,  249, 
257.  302. 

Kirk,  Sir  John,  110,  114,  116,  130, 

134,  136,  210. 
Kisanji  (near  mouth  of  Congo),  96 

ct  seq.,  99. 
Kitchener  of  Khartum,  Earl,  136,  291. 
Kitimbiriu,  131,  132,  136. 
Kivu,  Lake,  337. 
Knowles,  Sir  James,  142. 

KOELLE,    ReVD.    SiGlSMUND,    83,  I06, 

413,  438-440,  459- 
Kongo,  language,  lOO. 
Konjo,  See  Lu  Konjo,  Ba  Konjo. 
Koroka  River,  87. 
Kotakota,  241  et  seq.,  285. 
Krapf,  Dr.  Ludwig,  210,  413. 
Kruger,  President,  314. 
Kruboys,  Krumen  of  Liberia,  26,  153, 

371. 

Kiihlmann,  Herr  von,  41 1,  428,  429. 
Kunene  River,  87,  90  ct  scq. 
Kwanza  River,  92,  93. 
Kwo-ibo  River,  184. 
Kwo  people,  language,  190,  191. 

L.,  Miss  Elizabeth,  13,  14,  18. 
L.,  Lewis,  30. 

L.,  Mary  L.  S.  ("Polly"  Johnston), 
30. 

L.,  Air.,  15,  16. 
L.,  Airs.,  16,  18. 

L.,  Sophia  (Mrs.  J.  M.  C.  Johnston), 

18,  27. 
Laburnum,  208. 
Laeken,  108. 
Lahore,  293  et  seq. 
Lake  Nyasa,  240,  243,  247. 
Land-crabs,  97. 

Lankester,  Sir  E.  Ray,  359,  451. 
Lansdowne,  Marquis  of,  348,  350,  353, 

373,  375- 
Lapo  e  Faro,  Dr.,  86. 
Lascelles,  Mr.  Gerald,  317,  325,  334. 
La  Thangue,  R.  A.,  Mr.  H.  H.  141. 


Latin,  right  phonctical  pronunciation 

of,  360,  394. 
Lausanne,  37,  38. 

Lava,  beds  of,  Cameroons  Mountains, 
167. 

Lavigerie,  Cardinal,  311,  338. 
Lawrence  and  Bullen  (publishers), 
478. 

Laws,  Dr.  Robert,  211,  240  ct  seq. 

Lectures  in  France,  Wartime,  445. 

Ledochowski,  Cardinal,  311,  312. 

Lee,  Sir  H.  Austin,  112,  114. 

Leeches,  132. 

Leighton,  Lord,  34  ct  seq. 

Leipzig,  458. 

Leo  xiii.,  312. 

Leopard,  the,  62,  273. 

Leopold  II.,  Iving  of  the  Belgians, 

108-110,  115,  310. 
Lesseps,  Charles  de,  133. 
Lesseps,  Ferdinand  de,  11 1. 
Liberia,  269,  371  ct  scq.,  383. 
Liberia,  author's  book  on,  376,  478. 
Liberian  Mountains,  378. 
Liberty,  Messrs.  (Regent  Street), 

220. 

Library  of  the  L.'s,  15. 
Life  of  Livingstone,  267,  473. 
Likoma  Island,  240. 
Limestone,  321. 
Limpopo  River,  224. 
Lincoln,  President,  387. 
Linden,  Countess  von,  416. 
Lintthal,  290. 

Lion,  the,  61,  62,  130,  274,  421. 
Lion,  s.  S.,  231. 
Lisbon,  34,  107,  214  ct  scq. 
Liss,  209. 

Lissochiliis  giganteus  orchis,  96,  97, 
172. 

Lister,  Lady,  112. 

Lister,  Sir  Villiers,  112,  214,  226. 

Little  Life  Stories,  479. 

Littlehampton,  470,  474. 

Littleton,  Honble.  Algernon  (Ad- 
miral), 84  ct  scq. 

Liverpool,  84,  147,  431,  435,  437. 

Livingstone,  Consul  Charles,  177, 
180. 

Livingstone,  Dr.  David,  210,  241, 

267,  268,  297,  307. 
Livingstone,   Dr.   David,  neglect  of 

his  scientific  work,  268. 
Li\'ingstone  Mountains,  the,  247. 
Li'vingstonia  Mission,  the,  241. 
Lligwy,  408. 

Loanda,  St.  Paul  de,  92,  93,  102. 


496 


THE  STORY 


OF  MY  LIFE 


Lobengula,  262. 
Locarno,  226,  227. 
Loch,  Lady,  287,  306. 
Lofu,  estuary  of  (Tanganyika),  253. 
Lokoja  (Benue-Niger  Confluence), 
183. 

London  Missionary  Society,  211,  217, 
252. 

Longmans,  Green  &  Co.,  478. 
Louisiana,  400. 
Luafigwa  River,  240,  258. 
Luganda  language,  the,  339. 
Lugard,  Sir  Frederick,  210,  212,  338. 
Lujenda  River,  234. 
Lukonjo  language,  343. 
Luschan,  Professor  von,  418. 
Lynn,  Linton,  Mrs.  E.,  208. 
Lyon,  440. 

Lytton,  Countess  of,  287,  306. 

Mabo  Mountains,  234. 
Macaws,  404. 
^McCarthy,  Justin,  141. 
McCarthy,  Justin  Huntley,  141. 
Macdonald,  Sir  Claude,  200,  265. 
Mackenzie,  the  Revd.  John,  217. 
Mackinnon,  Lady,  138. 
Mackinnon,  Sir  William,  137-139- 
Alacmillan  Company,  The,  455,  479. 
Madagascar,  150. 
Madrid,  33. 

Magdalena,  R.  M.  S.,  405. 
Magnolias,  400. 

Magnolia  Forests  of  Alabama,  392. 

Maguire,  Captain  Cecil,  264,  269, 
271,  276  ct  scq. 

Maguire,  Rochfort,  261,  263. 

Mahogany  trees,  401. 

Mahrab  (Mihrab)  in  Mosques,  Ori- 
gin of,  46,  47. 

Mainwarings,  Maynwarings,  the,  7,  8. 

Majorca,  31  ct  scq.,  36. 

Makanjira,  Chief,  278,  279,  285. 

Makololo,  the,  235,  236,  270. 

Makua  people,  language,  231. 

Makua  porters,  232. 

Malaga,  33,  34. 

Malaria,  102,  103,  347. 

Malet,  Sir  Edward,  59. 

Malta,  58,  332. 

Maltese  in  Tunis,  58,  317,  324. 
Mambwe  people,  country,  251. 
Mammalian  fauna  of  North  Africa, 

the,  62,  63. 
Man  who  did  the  Right  Thing,  The, 

227,  479. 
Manati,  the,  193. 


Manchester,  136. 
Mandala,  239,  275. 
Mandara,  131,  132,  134,  136. 
Mandingos  of  West  Africa,  373. 
Mandrills,  99. 

Mangrove  swamps,  96  ct  scq. 
Mankind,  the  future  of,  460  ct  scq., 
466. 

Mann,  Gustaf  (Botanist),  166. 
Mann's  Spring  (Cameroons  Moun- 
tain), 164. 
Mantises,  97. 
Maple  &  Co.,  412. 
Maples,  Bishop,  246. 
Marahu,  131,  132,  136. 
Maravi,  210. 

Margaret's  Mansions,  St.,  139,  201. 

Marina,  La,  at  Tunis,  49. 

Marsa  at  Tunis,  45,  49,  323. 

Marseilles,  31,  48,  124,  440. 

Marjlebone,  218,  371,  376,  455. 

Masai,  the,  133. 

Matebeleland,  212,  261. 

Matipwiri,  Chief,  270,  298. 

Matmata  Highlands  Plateau,  321. 

Matron  of  Abbeyville  Hospital,  449. 

Mauch,  Carl  (discoverer  of  Zimbab- 
we), 414. 

Maynooth  College,  329. 

Mayo,  Countess  of,  81. 

Mayo,  Earl  of,  80,  81,  84,  87,  89 
ct  scq.,  329,  371,  477. 

T^fbeni,  343,  345. 

Mbuba  language,  344. 

Medenin,  town  of,  321. 

Mediterranean,  the  Tidal,  321. 

Megaceros  stag  ("Irish  Elk"),  27, 
421. 

Meinerzhagen,  Captain,  350. 
Mcinhof,  Professor  Carl,  419. 
Mentone,  439,  440. 

Mermaid  myth  in  Old  Calabar,  193. 
Mesopotamia,  418. 
Messimy,  Mons.,  439. 
Methodist  hymns,  396 
Methuen,  Messrs.,  408,  477,  478. 
Meura,  Lieut.,  343,  345  ct  scq. 
Meuricoffre,  Mme.,  37  ct  scq. 
Mexico,  431,  463. 

Military  officers  in  Uganda,  339,  348. 
Milk,  14. 

^rniais.  Sir  J.  E.,  35. 

Millennium,  the,  6. 

Miller,  Mr.  Alexander,  200. 

Miller,  Brothers,  Messrs.  A.,  177,  178, 

200,  202. 
IMillett,  Madame,  318. 


INDEX 


497 


Millet,  Captain  Philippe,  318. 
Millet,  Mons.  Rene,  317,  318,  328, 
331,  332. 

Milncr,  Lord   (Viscount),  313,  314. 
Milton  (Hampshire),  9. 
Miniatures  in  library  of  Windsor 

Castle,  307,  308. 
Miocene  fauna  of  East  Equatorial 

Africa,  349. 
Missionaries,  Christian,  91,  298,  464. 
^Mississippi  River,  400. 
Mississippi  State,  400. 
Mrs.  Warren  Daughter,  30,  479. 
Mitcham,  117. 

Mitchell,  Dr.  P.  Chalmers,  357. 
Mlanje  "Cedar,"  the,  234,  269. 
Allanje  Mountains,  234,  270,  275,  298. 
Mlauri  Chief,  235  et  seq. 
Mlozi,  Mulozi   (North  Nyasaland 

Arabs),  212,  247,  248,  300  et  seq. 
Mlungusi  River,  274. 
Moberley  Bell,  Mr.,  360,  383. 
Mozambique,  140,  210,  229  ct  seq., 

257- 

Moir,  Fred,  211. 
Moir,  John,  2ii,  239,  261. 
Molteno,  Mr.  Percy,  458. 
Mondole  Island,  148,  152-154,  159 
et  seq. 

Monitor  or  Varanus  lizard,  97,  186- 
188. 

Monrovia,  373,  374,  377- 
Monte  Carlo,  409, 
Montreal,  436. 
Moon,  the  full,  249,  277. 
Moore,  Mr.  George,  463. 
Morambala  Mountain,  234. 
Morgan,  Delmar,  109. 
Morgan,  William  de,  380. 
Morier,  Sir  Robert,  115,  203. 
Morocco,  62,  227,  228,  426. 
Mosaic  Books  of  Bible,  395,  464. 
Mosely,  Professor  H.,  no. 
Moshi,  117,  130. 
Mosque,  the,  46. 

Mosque  of  Zeituna  (the  Olive-tree), 
52-54,  72. 

Mosquito,  cause  of  Malarial  fever,  102. 
Mosquito,  H.  M.  S.,  270. 
Mosquitoes,  401,  404. 
Mossamedes,  85,  86. 
Mother,  Author's,  i,  7,  13,  29,  36. 
Mound  Bayou,  400. 
"Mount,  The,"  351. 
Mountains  of  inner  Mogambique,  234. 
Mponda,  Chief,  232,  235,  257,  275 
et  seq. 


Mponda's  Town,  bombardment  of, 

276  et  seq. 
Msiri,  258. 

Mud-fish.     {See  Periophthalmus.) 

Muhammad  bcl  Hajj,  320,  324. 

Muhammad  bel  Kassim  (Arab  gar- 
dener), 327. 

Muhammad  ash  Sharif,  53. 

Muhammadanism.  {See  Islam),  45, 
46,  466  et  seq. 

Munich,  421. 

Murray,  John  (publisher),  478. 
Murray,  T.  Douglas,  ill,  112,  146. 
Muscovy  Duck,  the,  175,  190. 
Musk  Ox  (Ovibos),  435. 
Musssenda  shrub,  97,  341. 
Mussali,  Mons.    Elias,  57,  65. 
Mustafa  ben  Ismain,  57,  64  et  seq., 
67. 

Mustard  Gas,  447  ct  seq. 
Mutesa,  King,  337. 
Mwanga  of  Uganda,  338  ct  seq. 
Mweru,  Lake,  240,  258. 
Myers,  Frederick,  265. 

Nachtigal,  Dr.,  149,  150,  184. 
Nairobi,  350. 
Namuli  Peaks,  234. 
Nana  (Jekri  chief),  178,  197,  198. 
Nandi  tribe,  350. 
Naples,  37  et  seq. 
Napoleon  i.,  4,  55,  416. 
Napoleon  in.,  45,  48,  440. 
Napoleonic  Wars,  4. 
Nashenden,  13  et  seq. 
National  Club,  The  (Church  of  Eng- 
land), 309. 
National  Liberal  Club,  309. 
National  Portrait  Gallery,  28. 
National  Societies'   Depository,  478. 
"Native  rights,"  258. 
Neanderthal  Man,  27,  60,  415. 
Necklaces,  195. 

Negro  education  in  United  States, 

393  et  seq. 
Negro  in  the  New  World,  The,  371, 

396,  401,  408,  478. 
Negro  music,  395,  396. 
Negroes,  treaties  with,  257,  258. 
Nettleship,  J.  F.,  27. 
New,  Revd.  Charles,  131. 
Newman,  Cardinal,  464. 
Newman  Street  Chapel,  5,  6. 
New  Orleans,  400. 
Newspaper  literature,  465. 
Newton,  Professor  Edward,  359. 
Newton,  R.  S.,  92. 


498 


THE  STORY  OF  MY  LIFE 


New  York,  384,  431,  436. 
Niamkolo  (Tanpanjika),  252. 
Nicoll,  Vice-Consul  John  Lowe,  232, 

240,  247,  248. 
Niger  Company,  the  Royal,  178,  185, 

213,  265. 

Niger  Dexta,  84,  140,  149,  150,  176 

ct  seq.,  183. 
Niger  River,  183,  184. 
Nigeria,  British,  183,  184,  265. 
Nile,  the,  120  et  seq. 
Nile  Quest,  the,  478. 
Nilghai,  the,  63. 

Nimbe,  capital  of  Brass  country,  185, 
186. 

Nineteenth  Century  and  After,  142-3. 

Nizam,  Order  of  the,  55. 

Norfolk,  Duke  of,  315,  380,  470. 

Norris,  E.,  113. 

North  Africa,  62,  63. 

NorthclifFe,  Viscount  (Sir  Alfred 

Harmsworth),  369  et  seq. 
Northern  Zambezia,  258,  269. 
Norway,  313. 
Norwood,  8. 

Novels,  the  Author's,  456,  477-479. 
Nudity  of  Efik  Chiefs,  191,  192. 
Numidian  marbles,  60. 
Nun  river,  mainstream  of  Niger,  188. 
Nuttall,  Mrs.  Zelia,  431. 
Nyamwezi  people,   language,  249, 

250,  258. 
Nyanja,  Chi-,  238. 

Nyasa  Lake,  210,  211,  232,  234,  243, 

247,  275,  276,  299. 
Nyasaland  (British  Central  Africa), 

115,  205,  210,  211,  221,  222,  231, 

269,  271,  275,  283,  286. 
Nyasaland,  CJonquest  of,  270  et  seq., 

285,  286,  292,  299  et  seq. 
Nyasa-Tanganyika  Plateau,  the,  249- 

252,  257,  291. 
Nyoro  (see  also  Unyoro),  342. 

"Obasi"   (a  mountain  deity,  Camc- 

roons),  166,  169. 
O'Brien,  William,  M.  P.,  206. 
Ocapia  johnstoni,  359. 
Offenbach  (the  composer),  33. 
Ogden,  Mr.  R.  C,  389- 
Ohio,  State  of,  432. 
Oil  palm,  173,  247,  341. 
"Oil  Rivers,"  147,  176. 
Oise  River,  446. 

Okapi,   Author's  discovery  of,  308, 

346,  358. 
Okapi,  the,  346,  358. 


Old  Calabar,  148,  154,  155,  191. 

Oldficld,  Mrs.  Anne,  7. 
"Old  man's  beard"  (Roccella),  164, 
392. 

Old  Testament,  464. 
Oliphant,  Mrs.,  5. 
Olivier,  Sir  Sidney,  402. 
Ontario,  434. 

Opening  up  of  Africa,  478. 

Opobo  River,  Niger  Delta,  176  et  seq. 

Oporto,  144. 

Orange  Free  State,  284. 

Orchardson,  W.  Q.,  35. 

Orchids,  96,  97,  251. 

Orchilla  lichen,  164. 

Oriel  College,  Oxford,  388. 

Ornithologists  (United  States),  432. 

Osborn,  H.  F.,  431. 

Osborne,  the  Royal  Yacht,  333. 

Oultremont,  Count  Jean  d',  108,  109. 

Owen,  Sir  W.  F.  W.,  148. 

Oxford,  441. 

Oxford  University  Press,  41,  458. 

P.  and  O.  Company,  133. 
Pace,  the  Misses,  10. 
"Palace  and  Mud,"  400. 
Palaeontologists,  415,  431. 
Palaeontology,  409,  415,  422. 
Palestine,  46,  463. 
Pall  Mall  Gazette,  141,  451. 
Palm  Oil,  173,  177. 
"Palm  Oil  ruffians,"  172. 
Palma,  31. 
Palmistry,  261,  262. 
Panama,  403,  404. 
Ranch  (Himalayas),  295. 
Pandanus,  172. 

Paper,  the  strewing  of,  315,  473. 
Papyrus,  316. 
Paradise,  466. 
Paris,  31,  36,  113,  376. 
Park  Lane,  40,  209. 
Parke,  Dr.  (Stanley's  companion), 
266. 

Parncll,  C.  S.,  261. 

Parrots,  92,  98,  99,  I04- 

Parrv,  Sir  Hubert,  450,  452. 

Parry,  the  Lady  Maud,  289. 

Parsi,  129,  279. 

Passion-flower,  272. 

Pastor  family,  the,  33. 

Pater,  Walter,  218. 

Paul,  St.,  definition  of  charity,  460. 

Paul's  St.,  Knightsbridge,  310. 

Paunccfote,  Sir  Julian,  114. 

Payne,  John  Howard,  319. 


INDEX 


499 


Peaches  and  peacli-trees,  125. 
Peacocks,  peafowl,  9,  296. 
Pear,  the  Prickly,  463. 
"Pease  from  the  Prince  of  Pease," 
319- 

Pechuel-Loesche,  Dr.,  95,  135. 
Peckham  (farm  boy),  9. 
Pelicans,  254. 

Pell}-,  Commander,  J.  II.,  179. 
Pcnck,  Herr  von,  418. 
Percy,  Lord  Eustace,  390. 
Pcreira,  Baron  von,  318. 
Pereira,  Yetta  von,  318. 
Pcriophtlialmus  fish,  97. 
Peronne,  443,  446. 
Peshawar,  296. 
Peters,  Dr.  Karl,  135. 
Petre,  The  Honorable  Sir  George,  215. 
Petworth,  209. 
Pfeil,  Count  Joachim,  135. 
Phalangers,  Vulpine,  no. 
Phallus  in  Saracenic  architecture,  46. 
Philadelphia,  386. 
Philip,  George,  and  Son,  477. 
Philo  of  Alexandria,  462. 
Phoenician  beliefs  in  Tunis,  46. 
Phoenician  relics  (Tunis),  322. 
Phonetic  Spelling,  478. 
Photograph  of  South  African  Group, 
261. 

Pigeonry,  an  American,  433,  434. 
Pigeons  of  Tunis,  322. 
Pigs,  433.  _ 
Pineapple  juice,  164. 
Pines,  400. 

Pinnock,  Revd.  John,  151. 

Pinnock,  Revd.  John,  Junior,  151. 

Pioneers  in  West  Africa,  etc.,  478. 

Planets,  the,  465. 

Plantain  eaters,  98. 

Platt-Deutsch,  419. 

Plymouth,  263. 

Pocock,  Ut.  R,  I.,  358. 

Poling,  379  et  scq.,  429,  454.  456. 

Poling  Potteries,  380. 

Polyglotta  Africana,  413. 

Pomel,  Professor  Augustus,  63,  409. 

Ponsonby,  Sir  Henry,  306,  307. 

Pontius  Pilatus,  462. 

Poole,  Dr.  Wordsworth,  302. 

Pope,  the,  41. 

Port-au-Prince,  401. 

Port  Elizabeth,  260. 

Port  Herald,  270. 

Port-of-Spain,  406,  407. 

Port  Wine,  216. 

Portal,  Sir  Gerald,  119,  341. 


Portal,  Fort,  342. 

I'ortugal,  attempt  to  come  to  terms 
with,  115,  216  et  scq.,  229,  235,  236. 

Portugal,   delimitation   treaty  with 
(1891 ),  269. 

Portugal,  Gothic  part  of,  104. 

PORTUGUKSE,  ThE,  96,  102  ct  SCQ.,  212, 

214  et  sea.,  235  et  seq.,  256,  257. 
Portuguese  African  Colonics,  91,  102, 

105,  149,  430. 
Portuguese  West  African  claims,  115, 

149. 

Portuguese  Government,  212,  214 
et  seq. 

Por^iiguese  Guinea,  102,  105,  199. 
Portuguese  Language,  the,  145,  214, 
-15,  394- 

Portuguese  West  Africa,  102,  149. 
Potteries,  the,  307. 
Poiamoch(rr;is  pigs,  275. 
Powney,  Colonel,  372-375. 
Presbyterians,  Presbyterian  Church, 

5,  137,  138,  19I-  192. 
Press,  the,  465-467. 
Prevention  of  Cruelty  to  Animals, 

Society  for  the,  437. 
Prickley  Pear  (Opiintia),  164,  463. 
Primroses,  472. 
Prince  Consort,  the,  41. 
Principe,  Id.  of,  102  et  scq. 
Priory,  St.  John's,  379  et  seq.,  428,  469. 
Propaganda,  the,  in  Rome,  311. 
Protection,  370. 

Protestant  party  in  Uganda,  339. 
Protestants  of  Wiirttemberg,  414. 
Provence,  Provengal,  31,  36,  37. 
"Prussian  manner,"  the,  418,  420. 
Psalms,  the,  464. 
Punch,  287. 

Purcell,  Dr.,  19,  39,  81. 
Puttkammer,  von,  148  et  scq.,  170. 
Pygmies,  the  Congo,  343  ct  scq. 
Pynts,  genus,  470. 
Python,  the  African,  186,  344. 

Quebec,  436. 

Queen  Alexandra  (Princess  of 

Wales),  333  et  seq. 
Queen  Anne's  Mansions,  143,  145, 

146,  201,  213,  219,  220,  310,  350 

et  seq. 

Queen,  the  Great  White,  194. 
Queen,  Mary,  416. 

Queen  Victoria.  See  Victoria,  Queen. 
Quelimane   (Zambezi  Delta),  229, 

230-232. 
Quinine,  102. 


500 


THE  STORY 


OF  MY  LIFE 


Race-Courses,  472. 
Raffalovich,  Mark  Andre,  206,  207. 
Railways  in  United  States,  385,  390. 
Rain,  300,  311. 

Rambler,  H.  M.  S.,  84,  85,  92. 

Ramos  River,  196. 

Rankin,  Daniel,  222,  230,  231. 

Raphia  palms,  341. 

Rations  in  France,  443,  449. 

Ravine  Station,  347,  350. 

Reade,  Mrs.,  55,  317. 

Reade,  Thomas  (Agent  and  Consul- 
General,  Tunis),  54  et  scq. 

Reade,  Winwood,  452,  479. 

Rebmann  (German-English  Mission- 
ary), Johann,  210,  413. 

Red  Deer,  the  Barbary,  62,  63. 

Reedbuck  antelopes,  251. 

Regent's  Park,  379. 

Regents  of  Uganda,  the,  339. 

Regiment,  The  56th,  2. 

Religion,  Author's  views  on,  460 
et  scq. 

Renan,  Ernest,  463. 

Revelation,  Book  of  the,  6,  464. 

Review  of  Reviews,  478. 

Revoil,  Paul  (French  Administrator, 
Tunis),  318. 

Revoil  (French  Explorer  Somali- 
land),  134,  135. 

Rhine  Valley,  416,  421,  456. 

Rhipsalis  cactus,  164,  407. 

Rhodes,  Right  Honorable  Ceol, 
59,  217  ct  seq.,  260  et  scq.,  264,  269, 
280-282,  291,  314,  459. 

Rhodes,  Herbert,  211. 

Rhodes  and  palmistry,  262,  263. 

Rhodes  Trustees,  the,  458. 

Rhododendrons  in  Himalayas,  295. 

Richardson,  Miss  Emma,  261  et  seq. 

Richmond,  Virginia,  386. 

Rift  Valley,  the,  350,  358. 

Rio  del  Rey,  173  ct  seq. 

Ripon,  Marquis  of,  366. 

Ritchies,  the,  226,  310. 

Ritual,  Greek  and  Roman,  7. 

River  Congo,  The,  99,  477. 

Roberts,  Field-Marshal  Earl,  269. 

Robinson,  Sir  Hercules,  213. 

Rochester,  8,  13  et  seq.,  369  ct  scq. 

Rock  engravings  of  Algeria,  410. 

Rogozinski  (Polish  Explorer),  m2, 
161. 

Roman  Catholics,  77,  116,  129,  144, 
145,  41S,  416. 

Romance  Languages,  Author's  stud- 
ies in,  20,  23,  36. 


Roman  ruins  in  Tunis,  323. 

Romans  in  Wales,  408. 

Rombo,  131,  133. 

Rome,  311. 

Rondebosch,  281. 

Roosevelt,  Mrs.  388. 

Roosevelt,  President  Theodore,  377, 
383  ct  seq.,  387,  388,  410. 

Root,  Mr.  Secretary  Elihu,  377. 

Rosebery,  Earl  of,  170,  338. 

Roses,  125,  207. 

"Roses  and  rapture,"  207. 

Rosetta,  120,  122. 

Ross,  Alexander  Carnegie,  232. 

Ross,  Sir  Ronald,  44. 

Rothschild,  220,  359. 

Roumefort,  Jeanne  de,  76. 

Roumcfort's  marriage,  79. 

Roumefort,  Natural  History  in  rela- 
tion to  fasting,  77. 

Roumefort,  Vicomte  Maurice  de,  48, 
51,  75  ct  scq._ 

Roustan,  Monsieur  (French  Minis- 
ter and  Consul-General) ,  48,  55 
ct  scq.,  59,  60,  62,  65. 

Royal  Academy,  The,  8,  37,  54,  77, 
141,  316,  363,  364,  423. 

Royal  Academy  Schools,  7,  23,  30, 
34  ct  scq.,  39. 

Royal  College  of  Surgeons,  22,  24,  30. 

Royal  Exchange  Assurance  Com- 
pany, the,  I,  6. 

Ro\-al  Geographical  Society,  no,  iii, 
116,  117,  140,  141. 

Royal  Insurance  Company,  the,  il, 
140. 

Royal  Mail  Steamship  Company, 

403,  404. 
Royal  Society,  1 16,  134. 
Royalist,  H.  M.  S.,  179. 
Roye,  Annie  (Annie  Johnston),  29. 
Ruanda  language,  country,  342. 
Rubber  questions  of  Liberia,  373- 

375- 

Rufu  River,  133. 
Rukwa,  Lake,  248. 
Rumbold  family,  412. 
Rungwe,  Mount,  247,  248. 
Ruo  River,  234,  270. 
Russia,  Russian  language,  80. 
Rustington,  289. 

Ruwenzori  Alountains,  341  et  seq. 

Sable  antelope,  the,  92. 
Safety  bicycle,  209,  310. 
Sahara  Desert,  57,  63. 
Saidi  Mwazungu,  279. 


INDEX 


501 


St.  Peter's,  Rome,  313. 
Saisi  River,  251. 

Sakcr,  Rcvd.  Alfred  (Cameroons 
missionary),  149,  151,  167. 

Salisbury,  the  late  Marchioness  of, 
202  et  seq.,  263,  264. 

Salisbury,  the  late  Marquis  of,  45, 
55.  56,  57,  62,  65,  182,  201  et  seq., 
213,  214,  217,  220  ct  seq.,  26s,  313 
et  seq.,  351,  353,  369. 

Sampson  Low  (Publisher),  99,  477. 

Sancy,  the  Comte  de,  48-51,  53,  57, 
64. 

Sanderson,  Lord,  59,  114,  354. 
Sanderson,  Rcvd.  Edgar,  21. 
Sandys,  Dr.  359. 
Santa  Marta  (Colombia),  406. 
Santo  Domingo,  402. 
Saone  River,  440. 
Sao  Thome,  Id.  of,  102,  103. 
Sao  Vicente  (Cape  Verde  Islands), 
106,  107. 

Saracenic  architecture,  45,  46,  47,  79, 

293. 

Sardinia,  62. 

Saturday  Review,  208,  314,  453. 
Saumarez,  Lord  de,  265,  266,  351. 
Saxe-Coburg,  H.  R.  H.,  the  Duke  of 

(Prince  Alfred),  264. 
Saxon  type,  the,  12. 
Sayyid  of  Zanzibar,  the,  213,  241. 
Schools  of  Art,  12,  20. 
Science  and  Religion,  478. 
Sclater,  Captain  Bertram,  269. 
ScLATER,  Dr.  P.  L.,  23,  110,  146,  269, 

356,  359- 

Sclater,  Mr.  W.  L.,  356  et  seq. 

Scopus  umbrctta,  97. 

Scott,  Miss  Eva,  352. 

Scott,  Miss  Sophia,  2. 

Scott,  Mrs.,  352,  371. 

Scottish  Club,  the,  146. 

Scottish  Geographical  Society,  Roy- 
al, 231. 

Scottish  planters  in  Nyasaland,  238, 
275. 

Seaford  (Sussex),  335. 
Second  coming  of  Christ,  the,  6. 
Second  Empire,  the,  42,  48,  50,  215. 
Selborne,  209. 

Selby,  the  Misses,  10  et  seq. 
Selsey  Bill,  474. 

Semi-Bantu  Languages,  83,  106, 

195,  438-440. 
Semliki  River,  345. 
Senegalese  soldiers  in  France,  106, 

438,  439- 


Serpa  Pinto,  Colonel,  212,  235 

et  seq. 
Sese  archipelago,  349. 
Seville,  33. 

Shakespeare's  Tempest,  403. 
Sharpe,  Sir  Alfred,  210,  212,  237 

ct  seq.,  240,  258,  269,  285,  2y8. 
Shaw,  Sir  Eyre  Massey  ("Captain 

Shaw"),  123. 
Sheep  in  Achill  Island,  362. 
Shela  mountains,  S.  W.  Africa,  88, 

89. 

Shepheard's  Hotel,  Cairo,  119. 
Shere,  352. 

Shire  Highlands,  210,  212,  216,  238. 
Shire  River,  216,  312. 
Shire,  the  Lower,  270. 
Shire,  the  Upper,  212. 
Sidi  Morjani  Street,  51,  52. 
Sierra  Leone,  84,  376,  413. 
Sikh  soldiers,  276,  279  ct  seq.,  285, 
294,  295. 

Silver,  Messrs.  (outfitters,  Cornhill), 
220. 

Simpkin,  Marshall,  Hamilton,  Kent 

and  Co.,  478. 
Sinceny,  446. 

Sister,  Author's  eldest  (Agnes  John- 
ston), 305. 

Six  Days  of  Creation,  the,  394,  435, 
464. 

Skilbeck,  W.  Wray,  142. 
Skulls  of  Negroes,  250. 
Slaves  in  United  States,  390. 
Slaves,  slavery  in  Jamaica,  402,  403. 
Slave  trade  on  Lake  Nyasa,  264,  276, 

et  seq. 
Sleeping  sickness,  252. 
Sligo  skull,  the,  370. 
Smoking  (tobacco),  32. 
Smyrna,  54. 

Smythies,  Bishop  (Zanzibar),  240. 
Snider  rifles,  181. 
Snowdon,  409. 
Snowfall,  443. 

Soden,  Baron  von,  148,  170,  171,  417. 

Soller,  (Majorca),  32. 

Solomon  Davies,  157  et  seq. 

Somaliland,  130. 

Somme  River,  443. 

Songwe  River,  247. 

Sophia  Scott  (Author's  great,  great- 
grandmother),  2. 

South  African  War,  314. 

Soutli  Lambeth  Road,  20,  35. 

South  Lambeth  School  of  Art,  12, 
20,  23. 


502 


THE  STORY 


OF  MY  LIFE 


Southampton,  420. 
Southern  Nigeria,  178,  200. 
Southwark,  11. 

Soveral,  Marques  dc,  215,  216. 
Spain,  30,  31,  215. 
Spanish  language,  the  31,  33,  120,  394. 
"Spanish  Moss"  (Tillandsia) ,  164, 
392. 

Sparkes,  John,  12,  22. 
Speck  von  Sternburg,  Baron,  410. 
Speke,  Captain  J.  H.,  337,  338. 
Stanley  as  "Bula  Matadi,"  loi. 
Stanley,  Sir  H.  M.,  92,  94,  100  ct 

seq.,  110,  129,  130,  265  ct  scq.,  338, 

346. 

Stanley,  Lady  (Mrs.  Henry  Curtis), 
265. 

Stanley's  wedding,  265,  266. 

Stanley,  Sir  H.  M.,  his  funeral  in 
Westminister  Abbey,  267. 

Stanley,  Lieut.  Denzil,  267. 

Stead,  William  T.,  141,  451. 

Steel  Works  at  Birminghain,  Alaba- 
ma (U.  S.  A.),  398  ct  scq. 

Steere,  Bishop  Edward,  83. 

Stockwell  Grammar  School,  21. 

Stonor,  Monsignor,  312. 

Stork,  H.  M.  S.,  230  ct  scq. 

Stork,  the  Saddle-billed,  316. 

Story  of  My  Life,  The,  479. 

Straunch,  Colonel  (Belgian  diplo- 
matist), 108  ct  scq. 

Struck,  Dr.  Bernhard,  458. 

Study  of  Mission  Life,  A,  314. 

Stuttgart,  412,  4I4,_  416,  417,  421. 

Sudanese  soldiers  in  Uganda,  334. 

Sugar-cane,  103. 

Sultan  of  Zanzibar,  136,  137,  21 1. 

Sun,  the,  466. 

Surbiton,  10. 

Surrey  scenery,  10,  352. 

Sussex,  315,  379.  448,  4707474- 

Sussex  Archaeological  Society,  The, 

473- 

Sussex  scenery,  315. 
Sutton  Lodge,  9. 

Swahili  language,  242,  277,  339,  345. 

Swahili  people,  302. 

Swan,  R.  A.,  J.  M.,  141. 

Swann,  Mr.  A.  J.   (Capt.  Swann), 

252,  257. 
Swans,  362,  433. 
Swedes,  167. 

Switzerland,  37,  226  ct  seq.,  290,  427. 
Synagogue,  the,  466. 
Syria,  45,  46,  47. 


Table  Mountain,  281. 

Tabora,  337. 

Tadema,  Sir  Alma,  35. 

Taft,  President,  403,  404. 

Takin  (Pudorcas),  the,  435. 

Tamils  of  Ceylon,  the  129,  156. 

Tanganyika,  Lake,  211,  251  ct  seq., 

256  ct  scq.,  349. 
Tapirs,  392. 

Taplin,  the  Prophet,  5,  6. 
Tartars,  the,  388. 
Tate,   Archbishop,  29. 
Taubman,  Goldie.   See  Sir  George  T. 
Goldie. 

Taufik  Pasha,  the  Khedive,  128. 
Taveita,  130,  133,  136. 
Taxidermist,  a  great  German,  414, 

415- 
Tebessa,  323. 

Teck  Castle  ( Wiirttemberg),  416. 
Telegraph,  the  "Cape  to  Cario,"  304, 
339- 

Teleki,  Count  Samuel,  129,  130. 

Tennant,  Miss  Dorothy  (Lady  Stan- 
ley), 265,  266. 

Texas,  400. 

Thackeray,  226. 

Thames  valley,  224. 

Theodolite,  the,  117. 

The  Tempest  and  the  West  Indies, 
403- 

Thomas,  Harvard,  141. 
Thomas,   Mr.  Carmichael,   122,  360, 
469. 

Thomas,  \N .  L.,  122,  352. 

Thomson,  Joseph,  131,  248,  258,  261. 

Thompson,  Mr.  J.  O.,  397. 

Tide  in  the  Mediterranean,  321. 

Tillandsia  ("Spanish  Moss"),  164. 

Timber-cutters  in  Canada,  445. 

Timbuktu,  323. 

Times,  The,  205,  207,  269,  286,  384. 
Tipsiness  in  Cape  Colony,  283. 
Toro  kingdom  (Uganda),  340,  342. 
Toronto,  434. 

Trade,  Politics,  and  Christianity,  etc., 
478. 

Treaty-makmg,  193,  194,  257. 
Tree  Cobras  (Dcndraspis) ,  161. 
Trench,  Mr.  A.  Chenevix,  141  ct  seq., 

310,  311- 
Trench,  Mrs.  Chenevix,  310,  311. 
Trinidad,  406. 
Trinity,  the,  460. 
Tripoli  (Barbarv),  320. 
Truth  about  the  War,  The,  478. 


INDEX 


503 


Tuberose  and  Meadow.nveet,  206,  207. 
Tubingen,  413. 

Tucker,  Riglit  Rcvd.  Alfred  (Bishop 

of  Uganda),  340,  348,  349. 
Tuileries,  the,  31. 
Tulse  Hill,  9. 

Tunis,  Tunisia,  g,  45  et  seq.,  48, 
40  ci  seq.,  317  ct  seq.,  331,  332. 

Tunis,  the  Beys  of,  56,  57,  317. 

Tunisian  fanaticism,  53. 

Tunis,  Jewisii  quarter  of,  69  et  seq. 

Tunisian  Question,  Letters  on  the, 
477-. 

Tunisian  Sahara,  320  ct  seq. 
Turkey,   suzerainty   over   Tunis,  56 
et  seq. 

Turner  (Author's  traveling  servant), 

215,  232. 
Turner,  J.  M.  W.,  335. 
Turtles  on  Ascension  Island,  263. 
Tuskegee,  389,  390. 
Two  Witnesses,  the,  6. 
Tyrannosaurus,  464. 

Uganda  Protectorate,  337  et  seq. 
Uganda  Protectorate,  The,  337,  352, 
478. 

Uganda  Railway,  338. 

Uganda,  Special  Commissionership 

in,  334,  352. 
Ulster,  361,  363. 
Ulster  Irish,  the,  363,  445,  446. 
Underbill  Station  (Congo),  99-101. 
United  States,  29,  372,  375,  377,  431 

et  seq.,  464. 
United  States'  education,  393,  394. 
United  States'  good  looks,  400. 
Universities'  Mission,  the,  212,  302. 
Unyoro  (Bunyoro),  359,  340,  342. 
Upper  Nile  Terrace,  library  at,  15. 
Uwungu  country,  the,  249. 

Vale,  Mr.  Wallis,  327,  437. 

Valencia,  32. 

Vancouver  Island,  12. 

Varanus  or  Monitor  lizards,  97. 

Vatican,  the,  311-13. 

Vegetation  near  mouth  of  Congo, 

96  et  seq. 
Veneerlngs,  The,  215,  440,  479. 
Venezuela,  406. 
Venice,  335. 

Venice,  a  vegetable,  97. 
Vermin,  472. 

Verschoyle,  Revd.  John,  217  et  seq. 
Vervant,  75  et  seq. 


Vicars,  Mr.  Consul-General  Edward, 
290,  440. 

Vicenti   (Zambezi),  233. 

Viceroy  of  India,  292. 

Victoria,  Ambas  Bay,  148,  150. 

Victoria  Nyanza,  340,  349. 

Victoria  Peak,  Cameroons  Moun- 
tains), 167. 

Victoria,  Queen,  42,  194,  215,  242, 
.305,  306,  315,  350,  397- 

Victoria  Station,  226. 

Views  and  Reviews,  etc.,  363,  478. 

Vincent,  Island  of  St.,  182. 

Virapan,  David,  129,  153  et  seq.,  156. 

Vittel,  watering-place,  424  et  seq. 

Vivi,  96,  100,  loi. 

Volterra,  Mons.  (Tunis),  64  et  seq., 

67  et  seq. 
Von  der  Decken,  Baron,  131,  135. 

Wagner,  Richard,  417. 
Walberton,  315,  379. 
Waller,  Revd.  Horace,  268. 
Walker,  Archdeacon,  340. 
Wanner,  Herr  Theodor,  411,  412, 
420,  421. 

War  of  1914-18,  430,  437,  441  et  seq. 
War  lectures  in  France,  441  et  seq. 
Warwick,  Countess  of,  452. 
Washington,  Dr.  Booker,  389,  390 

et  seq.,  393. 
Washington,  Mrs.  Booker,  391. 
Washington,  snowfall  at,  389. 
Washington,  U.  S.  A.,  377,  385. 
Wason,  Cathcart,  367  et  seq. 
Water-birds,  253. 
Water-lilies,  172. 
Watts  &  Co.,  478. 
Weaver,  Major,  39. 
Weinthal,  Mr.  Leo,  458. 
Wells,  Gardner,  Darton  &  Co.,  478. 
Wells,  Mr.  H.  G.,  451  et  seq.,  455. 
Wells,  Mr.  James,  361,  363. 
Welsh  people,  387. 
Welwitschia  mirabilis,  86. 
West  Africa,  147. 
West,  Benjamin,  5. 
West  Indians,  100,  151,  .403  et  seq., 

407. 

West  Indian  fruits,  151. 
West  Indian  Negroes,  150,  151. 
West  Sussex,  315. 
Westminster  Abbey,  429. 
Westminster  Palace  Hotel,  219. 
Whale,  evolution  of  the,  421. 
White,  Colonel  Frederick  (Gold 
Coast),  181. 


504  THE  STORY 


OF  MY  LIFE 


White  House,  the  (Washington), 
387. 

White  Star  Line,  384. 

Whitchurch  (Herefordshire),  ig,  39. 

Wliitechapel,  471. 

Whyte,  Alexander,  269,  272,  278,  344. 
Widdringtonia  whytci,  234. 
Wiesbaden,  457. 

WiUiams  and  Norgate  (pubhshers), 

363,  478. 
Wilson,  Sir  Erasmus,  25. 
Wimbome,  310. 

Windsor  Castle,  Author's  visits  to, 

306-308,  360. 
Wingate,  Sir  Reginald,  292. 
Winton,  W.  E.  de,  357. 
li'issmann   (German   steamer),  299. 
Wissmann,  Colonel  Hermann  von, 

299. 

Wodehouse,  Armine,  287  et  scq. 
Wolseley,  Viscount,  143. 
Woman  Suffrage,  209. 
Wood,  Sir  Richard,  45. 
Woods,  Sir  Albert,  305. 
Woodpeckers,  African,  98. 
Woodward,  Archdeacon  H.  W.,  458. 
Wordsworth-Poole,  Dr.,  302. 
Worthing,  470,  474. 
Wuri  River,  Cameroons,  148,  172. 
Wiirttemberg,  148,  411,  413  et  scq., 
415- 

Wiirttemberg,  King  of,  411-413,  416. 
Wiirttemberg  Missionaries,  413. 
Wiirttemberg,  Queen  of,  416. 

Yao  people,  language,  the,  211,  212, 
270,  274. 


Yarrow,  Messrs.  (boat-builders), 

299. 

Yazoo  Delta,  the,  400. 

Year  1868,  the,  il,  20;  do.  1869,  13; 

do.  1877,  34;  do.  1898,  331;  do. 

191 1,  critical  period  of  the,  424, 

426. 

Yellow  Duke,  173  et  seq. 
Yellow  Duke's  canoe,  173. 
Yellow  fever,  153,  401. 
Yew-trees  in  Africa,  350. 
Young,  R.  N.,  Lieut.,  211. 
Young  Men's  Christian  Association 
(Y.  M.  C.  A.),  441  ct  seq.,  448,  457. 
Ysabel  11.,  Queen,  409. 
Yule,  Mrs.  (Louisa),  326. 
Yule,  Mr.  W.  R.,  292. 

Zambezia,  213,  236,  267. 
Zambezi  Delta,  230,  231. 
Zambezi  River,  the,  213. 
Zangwill,  Mr.  Israel,  463. 
Zanzibar,  133,  212,  227  ct  scq. 
Zanzibaris,  loi. 
Zarafi  (Yao  Chieftain),  276. 
Zebras,  344. 
Zimbabwe,  414. 

Zomba,  British  Central  Africa,  271, 

304,  305- 
Zomba  Mountain,  271. 
Zomba  Residency,  240,  291  et  scq. 
Zoological  Gardens,  20,  22  et  seq.,  30, 

79,  no,  356,  358. 
Zoological  Society,  the,  23,  99,  357. 
Zulus,  223. 

Zumbo  (Zambezi),  236,  240. 


